


Better than Nothing

by callmespiderman



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (lol if I can manage to write horror we shall see it is such a delicate art), Adventure, Alien Character(s), Apprenticeship, Exploration, F/M, Feel it slowly smolder, Force Training, Gen, Horror, Lightsaber Battles, M/M, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Mystery, Other, Plot Heavy(ish), Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Reader is more or less gender neutral, Slow Build, Slow Burn, slowish start, sprinkled with fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-05-15 00:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 56,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5764390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmespiderman/pseuds/callmespiderman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Resistance and the First Order's conflict wasn't your concern. You were just an ordinary citizen doing their job on a research base on Hoth, until one day on a routine supply run your ship is captured by the ruthless First Order and in less than 24 hours everything in your life is changed forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Capture

Bitter cold air stung your face as you made your way to the nearest hangar. You were nearly there, already looking forward to the warmth and shelter from the wind that was waiting inside. Stumbling through the door, you turned around and punched in the code to close it again, letting out a sigh of relief which condensed on the cold air. Shaking the snow off the outside of your protective outer clothing you inwardly cursed your absolute loathing for the cold white powder. Already the snow was beginning to melt in the much more comfortable heat of the massive metallic hangar.

“[Y/N]!” 

The sound of someone shouting your name from across the hangar caught your attention. Removing your helmet, and other protective face gear your turned to get a better look at who it was.  
One of the research leaders on the base came jogging up to you. He was an average looking man in his late 40s, bundled up in protective outwear as well, and as always with a large smile plastered across his face.

“[Y/N].” He said once more, just the slightest bit out of breath from running more than halfway across the sizable hangar. “So glad I caught you.” He grinned, the stupid grin he always got when he was about to make a somewhat unreasonable request.

“What is it?” You asked, not trying very hard to keep the slight irritation and exhaustion out of your voice. You had just gotten back from spending 5 hours out in the snow checking and rechecking all the sensors outside. You wondered why you even needed half of them, it was just a research base after all. But, worrying about that was above your pay grade, so in the end, you didn’t give a shit.

“So sorry to send you off on another errand so soon,” He said with mock apology. You could tell he was trying to sound sincere, but it was always more than obvious to you that they weren’t actually all that sorry. “but we are running very short on food and we need you to go make an immediate supply run.”

You furrowed your brow at him. Hadn’t you just made a supply run last week? The base should have been good for at least several more weeks. You voiced this concern but the research leader brushed it away with another grin. “Uh, some of the rations that had gotten sent to us last week were contaminated and as such have been deemed unsafe for human consumption. Oh! And we’ll be having visitors on the base next week, so we do need to stock up on extra rations.”

Reaching into the pockets of his coat he pulled out the disk that held all of the necessary information about the order they would be placing. You took the disk from his outstretched hand and tucked it into one of your pockets as you had done nearly a dozen times prior to this.

“When will I be departing?” You ask, now resigned to your fate. You began slipping off your coat, but before you could even do that the research leader spoke up again.

“Uh–“ he said hesitating just the slightest, “right now actually.” 

“Are you shitting me, Daniel?” You asked, without even a hint of politeness left in your tone, keeping your yourself from screaming at him was your main goal now as irritation hummed along your nerves.

“Please.” He said, an urgency in his voice that wasn’t there before, slightly abating the irritation you feel. “I’m really am sorry to make you go out again, but it is extremely urgent that you make this run as soon as possible.”

Groaning you shrugged your jacket back on. “Fine, but you better let me have at least a day off after this.” You grumbled, making your way over to the small transport ship. 

“Absolutely! In fact you can have the next three days off after you get back.” 

That brought a smile to your face. You usually only got one day off a week, if that. There was a lot to be done on the base to maintain it, and not too many people who were able to do it. “Alright, I’ll leave right now.” you said. It may have sucked, but at least there was going to be a happy ending.

"Thank you, [Y/N]!” Daniel shouted after you as you turned and began to walk towards your transport ship. “We really appreciate you doing this!”

Waving back as you walked away was the only response you gave him. You thought a better way of phrasing it would have been: _Thanks for cleaning up our mess for us yet again!_ You couldn’t believe how many blunders occurred on this base which led to routine emergency supply runs. How any of these men still had a job was a total mystery to you. Currently you worked on a research base on the planet of Hoth. The temperature was never above freezing, and staying out at night would kill you. If you came unprepared for the extreme conditions, that could kill you too.  
Despite these bleak conditions, people on the base operated as if they were stationed on Naboo. Bumbling through their work without a care in the world. Every single damn week it seemed that rations went missing, or some crucial part got broken, the central heating module had broken no less than three times, rations had run short at least four times, and more than once a crucial sensor had gotten damaged as well. Never before in your life had you seem a base with this many regular problems.  
How could they all be so irresponsible? It was like none of them even grasped the gravity or the seriousness of the threat the cold posed. But how could they not? They were research scientists. It baffled you that they weren’t more careful and accountable with their work.

Pushing the concerns about incompetency out of your mind, you climbed aboard the research base’s small transport ship. The hum of the engines as the ship started up helped in silencing your thoughts, and your relaxed, focusing as the bay door opened and you prepared for take off.

****

 

Once you were in the silent vacuum of space you began to finally relax from some of the tension you’d been feeling. Except for the tension that never fully went away. It always sat in your chest, a constant pain, reminding you of your never ending fear. Being brought up in an unstable environment did that to people unfortunately. 

Reflexively you hit the commands on the nav computer to plot your course to the nearest trade plannet. As you waited for the computer to navigate you wondered about the possibility of leaving the base for a while during your upcoming three days off. Going to a warmer planet would be an amazing way to spend three days. Maybe not too warm, you didn’t want your tolerance to the cold to wear off entirely, but somewhere where going outside didn’t hurt your face.

A tone sounded announcing that the nav computer had finished calculating. You finished all other preparation and then made the jump to light speed. 

With the course set, and the time of arrival set at two hours, you decided that you may as well relax for the time being. you swiveled the vacant co-captains chair around to face you, propped your feet up, laid back, and allowed yourself to close your eyes.

****

A violent shudder shook the ship, jarring you out of the sleep that you hadn’t realized that you’d fallen into. Apparently you’d been more tired than you’d realized. 

Blinking, you try to figure out what had caused it, but having just woken up made that a bit difficult. You see that you’ve come out of light speed, and the destination trade planet was in front of you, so that was good at least. You stared at it, bleary eyed for a few moments before realizing that the ship wasn’t moving towards it. Even if the autopilot had failed to come on after coming out of light speed the ship should have still been drifting towards the planet, pulled in by the tug of gravity.

You look down at the navigation screens in front of you to check on the ships trajectory. Maybe it was moving, but just so slow that you couldn’t easily see it.

Shit. The location indicator confirmed your fears. Your ship was stuck stationary in the air, which meant someone had you in their tractor beam.

You crept to the back of the ship to see if you could get a look at just whose grip you’d unluckily fallen into, but you're unable to get a good look at what their ship looks like from the few tiny portholes in the back. However, you know there’s really only two possibilities for who would catch a ship in a tractor beam. Either it was pirates looking for something valuable, or it was the First Order randomly capturing yet another ship, something they’d been doing with increasing frequency.

Months ago you’d heard news about the destruction of the First Order's Star Killer base from a few people on the research base, and it had seemed like not long after that the stories of ships going missing to the First Order had increased. You didn’t know anyone who’d been taken by the First Order and returned, and no one else did either. Some assumed they killed everyone that they took, others though they were forcibly recruiting more storm troopers. The reasoning went that if Star Killer really was destroyed then the First Order was likely very short on crew, and would be desperate to rebuild their numbers. It seemed like a silly and ineffective way to recruit people to you, but that didn’t matter now.

A shadow loomed over your ship as your captor made their approach, presumably to board your ship. You go back to the front of the ship and sit in the captains seat once again, watching out the windows. Your last few moments of freedom grow visibly shorter before your eyes as your ship recedes into and is engulfed by a much larger craft. 

You aren’t left to wonder much longer who had abducted you. The tell tale white of stormtrooper armor greets your eyes as you watch them walking back and forth, going about their duties in the transport hangar your ship was being pulled into. You never thought a sight could cause you such fear. As far as you were concerned, the sight of them meant to you that your life was very quickly coming to an end.

You sit and wait in the captains room, not sure what else there really was to do. You had a blaster sure, but if you started shooting then you would die for certain. But, if you were calm, compliant, and explained your situation maybe they would see there was no reason to harm you. You were an ordinary citizen, just making a supply run for a research base… Oh shit the researchers. Picked up your radio to tell them you'd be delayed and might not make it back, but the static that you heard meant that your communications had already been jammed, not very surprising unfortunately. Irresponsible or not the scientists still needed the rations you'd been sent for, not to mention this ship. You knew it was almost certainly not going to happen, but you really hoped they’d let you go so that you could go back with the ship. It was the only interstellar transport the base had.

You’d had two previously, but currently you were working on repairs on the second. Repairs that needed parts, parts that had to be gotten from another planet. Maybe the First Order could at least let you send a transmission for a rescue for the team. You weren’t sure if those scientists should have ever been trusted down there in the first place.

The high pitched screeching of metal being ripped and violently torn shatters through your ears. You flinch as you hear, and feel, a loud thunk somewhere right outside the ship, and then see a large flat piece metal slowly drift to a stop in front of your ship.

Well, there goes the side door. you think glumly staring at its mangled form on the hangar floor. It was as if a great force had simply torn it from the ship. Why wouldn’t they just ask you to open the door? It seemed like they’d already assume you’d be non compliant. Perhaps most ships that they captured were, that seemed plausible.

The sound of heavy foot falls echoes down the hallway of your ship toward you in the command room. Giving a sigh and trying to quiet your nerves, to no avail, you laced your fingers together and placed them over your head, placing your small blaster on the seat beside you. Then you waited as you watched the hangar through the glass in front of you.

It didn’t take long, You saw the storm troopers reflected in the glass before you as they came up and surrounded you from behind, blasters up and pointed directly at you. The first one that came forward grabbed your blaster, securing it to his own waist. You felt a strong twinge of annoyance even though you already known that it was going to happen. Then he and another storm trooper to your left grabbed you roughly under the elbows and hauled you up and out of the chair. They spun you around and marched you off the ship. You could have walked, but you let them drag you, from the way they'd been acting it seemed like they’d take any form of resistance as a threat.

Your short journey together ends when they shove you to your knees in front of another group of stormtroopers, this one led by a tall hooded figure wearing a black and chrome mask that distorted their voice.

The hooded black figure stoops down, their unreadable mask regarding you in painful silence for what feels like an eternity. Your fear and anxiety flare up in your chest, building to an almost unbearable intensity as the moments of silence slowly crawled by. At last, the masked figure spoke.

“The tracking data, where is it?” The masked figure asks, the mechanical voice shooting chills down your spine.

“Tracking data…?” you ask, your genuine confusion steadying your voice.

“Search them.” The hooded figure orders and the two storm troopers at your sides haul you up again and begin patting down your clothing. You force yourself to stay calm, if you didn’t resist it would show you didn’t pose them any threat, soon they’d find that you didn’t have any tracking data, and maybe by some impossible chance they’d let you go so you could complete your supply run.

“I’ve found it, sir.” A stormtrooper announces when he pulls the disk that Daniel had given you from your front pocket. He sounded a bit too happy about it, you think to yourself.

“Uh,” you mutter, “That’s actually just a supply list and some credits.”

“Take it to a computer to have it analyzed.” The hooded figure commands, handing the disk over to a trooper by their side. The trooper set off on their errand immediately, walking as quickly as possible toward his goal.

“Take our prisoner to a cell and prepare them for questioning.” He said to the two troopers at your sides, and they complied immediately, thankfully allowing you to walk on your own this time.

You enjoyed the feeling of walking and stretching your legs while you could, since you weren’t sure when you’d be able to again at this rate.


	2. Interrogation

You really missed your coat right now. In order to secure you to their standing slab of an interrogation table, they had been forced to remove your thick outer protective clothing. It was the only way there were able to get the straps to fit snugly against your wrists and feet. So here you were stripped down to nothing but your undershirt, and a light pair of shorts you kept on under your heavier cold climate pants. (Without shorts the rough material of the heavy pants chaffed horribly against the skin.)

The cold wasn’t a stranger to you, but normally you had layers of clothing or blankets to protect you from it. Now you had most of your skin exposed and direct contact of the cold metal of the table. With your hands and feet secured firmly in place and away from your body, you couldn’t even huddle your own body together for warmth. You were completely vulnerable to the cold, and everything else for that matter.

Soldiers would come in and out occasionally, screaming questions in your face, but you still didn’t know anything about this tracking data or rebel base they were screaming about. Not to mention you were already used to people screaming at you so their interrogation technique wasn't very effective. You flinched occasionally at some of the more angry outbursts of shouts, but for the most part you kept your face blank and stuck to the only truth you knew. The disk you had been handed contained supply data and credits to pay for the formerly mentioned supplies, that was all. You were just a worker on a maintenance crew on a research base, and needed to get back to them, sooner rather than later, with supplies.

You shivered on the slab in between interrogation sessions, your whole body was beginning to ache as your internal temperature continued to drop with each passing moment. You hear a hiss from the door to your cell as it slides open, and looking up you expect to see another white stormtrooper but instead you see the black hooded figure enter the room. Your insides curl up in fright at the sight of them. You didn’t even need to see their face to know they were furious, it was obvious enough from their body posture. Leaned forward, shoulders hunched over, hands clenching angrily at their sides.

“You lied.” The mechanical voice growled, the anger coming through clearly in their voice, despite the distortion from the mask.

You choose not to respond instead just stare at them, deadpan expression firmly on your face. It wouldn’t do you any good to contradict them right now, clearly they were on the edge of lashing out at anything, and you would rather that wasn’t you.

The hooded figure stalks around the slab that you’re strapped to, fear shivering down your spine whenever they pass behind you, outside of your line of vision. You felt like a defenseless creature that had been tied down in front of a starving predator. 

“What other data have you smuggled to the Resistance besides this?” The hooded figure demanded, voice still sounding angry.

“I- I didn’t smuggle any data.” you stutter, voice shaking and confused as ever. You’re telling the truth, why won’t anyone believe you? “I’m just part of a research tea–“ the hooded figure raises their hand and your head is slammed back into the chair before you can even finish your sentence. You couldn't see what, but something powerful pressed down around your head, holding you in place. How were they doing this? The masked figure was still standing an arms length away… could it be–?

Before you can think further pain tears through your head, worse than any headache or migraine you’ve ever felt before. It feels like your brain has been put into a vice made out of broken glass, pressure and sharp pangs ringing across your nerves, overwhelming all of your other sense. You utter a gasp of pain as you fight to suppress a scream.

You’re so consumed by pain that you don’t even pay attention as the hooded figure slowly comes closer. You keep your eyes shut, fighting as hard as you can against the pain, and the screams that want to rip their way from your throat. You feel the presence of something forcing its way through you mind, beginning at the front and slowly working its way to the back. It feels like a knife slicing straight through the center of your skull, pushing further towards the the innermost parts of your mind. As your agony reaches its peak, the force is impeded at the back of your mind, a type of mental reflex you had never known you had regurgitated the presence out of your mind as if you’ve just gagged on something particularly unpleasant. You don’t know if its been seconds or minutes but finally the pain eases, and you let out a sigh of relief. The sound of your pounding heart echoing loudly in your ears.

When you allow yourself to open your eyes you find the mask hovering only inches away from your face, causing your to flinch back instinctively and let out a gasp. 

Slowly they remove their hand from where it had come to rest, next to your left temple. At least the hooded figure seemed less angry now, instead they seemed perplexed, tilting their head as the continued to stare at you.

“Interesting.” The voice hisses smoothly. “Perhaps you may be of some use to us.” The mask hovers close to your face a few moments more before abruptly drawing away as the tall figure strode out of the room.

_What the fuck was that…_

*****

After the shortest and strangest interrogation ever at the hands of the masked figure, you find yourself being escorted to another cell, at least your pretty sure its a cell, where else would they put a prisoner? But this cell came with not a cot, but an actual bed, its own very small refresher, and even a window that looked out into the inky blackness of space. Despite the amenities, it was an incredibly small room, the single bed alone taking up two thirds of the space.

None the less, it was much better than the room you’d been in previously. Once the troopers had left you alone in the room and the door had closed behind them you sat down on the bed, noticing someone had been considerate enough to place a heated blanket at the end of it, and a change of clothes that were much warmer. You slid into the clothes, appreciating the soft fabric on the inside and laid down, gratefully curling up in comforting warmth. Sleep likely wasn’t going to be coming to you any time soon, but you could at least warm up and relax while you were able to.

You laid there a few moments, considering your own hunger when your mind snapped back to what had caused all of this in the fist place. If you didn’t do something the men that you’d been working with and living alongside for months on the research base would all die, likely horrible deaths. 

Not having any other options for communication with the outside world, you stand up and go to tap on the door, hoping to get the attention of one of the guards. Maybe they could at least send out a transmission to tell the research base to contact another vessel to bring them supplies since the one they had sent out would not be returning. 

As you raise your hand to open the door, you hear a hiss and the door opens automatically. You flinch and jump back, expecting some type of angry figure to come storming through the door but there was no one on the other side. You stumbled into the bed and sat down, regarding the open and unguarded door before it closed again. Had there been some kind of electrical malfunction? Last time you checked prison cells weren’t supposed to open on their own, kind of defeated the purpose.

You stand and go to try the door again, see if the first time was a fluke or not. Once again though, the door opens automatically when you approach and move to open it. Curiosity gets the better of you and you stick your head out, glancing up and down the long metallic hallway. When you’d been led down this way you hadn’t been paying attention but now that you were you noticed that the hall was lined with doors that looked exactly like yours. Plain metallic with a round port hole, and a red number emblazoned on the top.

Cautiously you step into the hall and allow the door to slide shut behind you. Glancing up at your own door you see the number “5437” marked above it, falling in numerical order with those around it. 

While you’re in the hallway taking in your new environment you here the whirring of an approaching protocol droid.

“Welcome, this is block 5E.” The droid said in its programed-to-sound-polite voice. “I am to show you your new living quarters, this way.” The droid said, turing around and motioning before walking off down the hall.

You followed after it, walking slowly so as not to outpace the droids slow staggering pace. You stared around at the doors as you passed them, wondering how many were occupied. You couldn’t see in any at the moment, so there was no way to be sure.

After rounding a corner to the right at the end of the hall you came to a set of double doors which opened automatically as you and the droid approached. Entering you found an average sized cafeteria, food was served on the far side from the door, and the rest of the space was filled with tables and chairs.

A few small groups of people sat scattered about the cafeteria, but it felt empty. “Food is served here at the posted times on the door,” You glanced at the sign, a typical three meal schedule, they barely even needed a sign for that. “And if you’ll follow me this way I will show you to the public laundry room where you will be able to pick up your clean uniforms and drop off your dirty ones when you may have them.”

You scrunched your face up at the mention of uniforms, but it was only logical that a prison would have such things. Poking your head in you glanced around the laundry room. It was incredibly basic and straight forward just like the lunch room had been. Glancing at the wall you saw a great number of slots, all with numbers that matched the doors outside. You located the slot that had your number on it but found it to be empty.

“Your uniform will be ready in a few hours.” The droid assured you. “Since you've just arrived they have not yet had the proper time to prepare it.” You shrugged, and turned around and walked out, the droid following after you.

Walking back to the room the droid prattled about the other rules. “You are to remain in your room unless eating or dropping off and picking up your laundry. You are expected to be dressed in uniform, and waiting at the main doors every morning, promptly at 7am.” That caused you to groan. “And you are never to leave your assigned block unless going to work, or if you are given explicit orders by a superior crew member. If you have any further questions your block captain is in room 5400.” The droid gestured to the end of the hall to indicate where you could find the room, gave a slight bow, and dismissed itself. The whirring of its gears growing fainter as it walked down the hall. 

“Oh, wait!” you called after the droid, running to catch up with it. “Is there any way I could have you transmit a message for me, its very urgent.”

“My apologies but I do not have that authority, you would need to talk to your block captain.” The droid tells you before continuing its journey towards the main doors and out of block 5E.

You glanced down the hall towards the cell block captains room. You began to walk down the hall, resigned to the fact that you’d have to talk to him. You hated talking to people, especially people who were part of a system that more or less abducted you and turned you into their slave. You had to forget about that now though, somehow you had to convince this person that you needed to get a transmission out to the research base.

****

“Absolutely not.” The cell block captain responded, not even lifting his head. He sat behind the desk in front of you, his feet up as he read a device that he held in his lap. Thankfully he wasn’t wearing a mask unlike 90% of the other people on this base, but with how expressionless he was he may as well have been.

“But they’ll die!” You pleaded, “Please I will never ask for anything else, just a quick transmission to let them know I won’t be able to come back. They’ve only got rations for another day or so.”

“I’m not allowing you to send a transmission to the Resistance to warn them that their base has been found.”

“Why is everyone so convinced that they’re the Resistance? Its just a group of research scientists.”

“I’m guessing it has something to do with the large amount of embedded data on your “scientist’s” disk detailing the orbiting position of this and other first order ships.”

“What!?” you exclaimed, this was certainly news to you. “There must have just been a mistake it can’t have been–“

“It was.” He said, cutting you off before you'd even finished your thought. His tone was as short and unamused as ever. “That was not a research base it was a Resistance base, and they’d been using you to smuggle data for them for weeks under the guise of a supply ship.”

You sat back, feeling a great weight of realization settle over you. Yep, that was it, you were dead. The First Order had caught you with Resistance intel, there was no way there was going to be a happy ending for you after that one. Even if you personally had never known anything about it.

"Well if you’re done asking stupid questions you can get out now.” The block captain said with a dismissive wave of his hand, nose still buried in whatever he was reading.

You got up without another word, leaving his room and going to head back to your own. On the way back you wondered if the fact that you’d gotten “welcomed” already meant that you were safe from death or not. Probably not, it was likely just something that the droids did automatically whenever a new prisoner/slave arrived.

Just as you were pondering if your “crimes” may still earn you a swift death you heard a the low hiss of the main doors opening. You turn your head to look out of curiosity only to be greeted by the unwelcome sight of the black masked figure striding purposefully down the hallway of block 5E. Six stormtroopers followed behind him, flanking him on either side. Worse yet, they were heading straight for you.

You stayed where you were, there wasn’t anywhere to run or hide anyway, and it wasn’t like you were going to walk towards them.

Stopping a respectful distance away the black masked figure looks in your direction and addresses you.

“Come with us.” He says, no discernible emotion in his voice.

He turned and began to walk away, and you follow, not wanting to risk the pain you knew the figure in front of you was capable of inflicting. The stormtroopers formed a perimeter around you, which made you internally laugh at the overkill of it all, your thoughts quickly sobered though. These people were definitely into overkill, which made the odds of being killed seem more and more likely by the minute.


	3. Testing

This damned ship must have been massive. Maybe it was just your nerves, but to you it felt like you’d been walking with your poesy of Stormtroopers for over half an hour. The whole time your mind racing uncontrollably, mostly thinking of a hundred and one horrible ways things that could be awaiting you at the end of this journey.

Without warning the man in black who was leading the group in front of you stops, snapping you out of your thoughts when you nearly walk into his back. You wonder briefly what you would have felt had you made contact with his back. Would there be the soft flesh of a human underneath the robes, or would it be the hard metal of a machine. Brief fear flashes across your mind as you consider that possibility.

“Wait here.” the black hooded figure commands you in his distorted voice, barely looking over his shoulder at you before motioning for the storm troopers to follow him as he strode away. You were alone now, almost sad as you watched them walk away. Almost.

You gave a small sigh of relief and glanced around the room they’d left you in. It was as large as a hanger but it looked like a literal dump. From the large heaps of scrap that looked like small mountains you were guessing this is where they put that trash that was too large to fit in the garbage compactor. It was a fairly impressive sight, and looked like it would be a lot of fun to climb.

You stood patiently for several minutes before your boredom got the better of you and you began to wander around, deciding they probably weren’t going to come back for you any time soon. You felt a pang of irritation as to why they’d bring you along on this stupid hike if they were just going to leave you behind with the trash. After rolling your eyes at their audacity you allowed your gaze to wander over the mountains of scrap metal towering above you. A lot of it seemed to be broken or replaced computer consoles. Deep gashes were cut, or almost melted, into the sides of them, making it look like they’d been slashed by the claws of a large and vicious creature. 

Childlike excitement and curiosity getting the better of you, you began half investigating, half climbing up the scrap pile, still marveling at the size of it. This wasn’t so bad, it was at least something interesting to do, and it gave you the opportunity to stretch out all of your muscles. Something that felt good after how many hours of being restrained in one ridged position not that long ago. This was the most freedom you'd had the whole time you were here, and you planned to enjoy it as much as you could.

You pause for a break momentarily on a section of the scrap that's flat and large enough to comfortably stand on. Crouching down as you catch your breath you investigate the markings on the machinery below you, wondering if you can figure out what it originally was. Suddenly you _feel_ more so than hear or see something large and heavy moving over your head. Quickly you whipped your head and see a twisted piece of metal that hung precariously over you, swaying ever so slightly. Without thinking you suddenly know its going to fall, where its going to fall, and how to jump out of the way to avoid being crushed to death. You don't think, because there wasn't time to think, you simply let the knowledge of what's going to happen and what you must do guide you, and jump. 

A fraction of a second after you jumped you head a loud bang, and the whoosh of air generated lightly ruffled your hair. Thankfully moments later your arms wrap around a large metal pipe that you'd initially been aiming for when you'd made your jump to safety. Unfortunately you weren’t out of danger yet. The twisted metal that had just fallen was heavy enough that the moment of it crashing down into the trash heap was enough to destabilize the entire pile. Wide eyed you glanced back to the ground, which was now almost fifty feet in the air. Suddenly you felt very small and fragile precariously dangling with your arms grasped around a pipe that was now just as unstable as everything else around it. It shifted and began to droop downwards, threatening to let you slide off the end before it fell out of place entirely.

A strange calm comes over you as you jump once more mind completely focused on the task at hand. Your reflexes keep you moving and one step ahead of the next large piece that was hurtling towards you, threatening to squash you like the smallest of insects. Going down was much faster than going up, especially when your descent was more of a carefully controlled fall than anything else. Upon reaching the sweet comfort of solid ground you ran off the momentum you still had from your rapid descent, and sprinted to the other side of the room as the pile continued to sag and shift. It finally came to a state of equilibrium after less than a minute, and it looked like the pile was about 30% shorter than it had been when you’d first entered the room. Pieces still shifted here and there, but thankfully it didn’t seem like there would be another avalanche.

Heart pounding in your chest you finally begin to breath again, mind back to racing once more now that you were out of danger. _You had almost died_. The thought repeated over and over again in your mind. _Almost died…_ You were very grateful, as you usually were, for your unusually quick reflexes. 

You bend over, crouching in the shadows at the far side of the room as you rest your hands on your knees, trying to get yourself to calm down, a difficult task when you were still coming down off an adrenaline high.

The sounds of returning footfalls catches your attention, causing you to straighten up. As you spot the chrome glimmer of the black masked leader of the group you wonder suddenly if the noise from the scrap pile collapsing had drawn their attention, and now there were coming to see what kind of mess you had made. What did it matter though, it was just garbage. You’d compacted it for them, that was all.

You had expected more anger when the black clad figure strode into the room, but instead you got more of a sense of worry off of him. You weren’t sure why you thought you knew what they were feeling, but for some reason it felt like you could. You brushed the thought from your mind, it didn’t really matter what he was feeling anyway, you were probably just imagining it. His body language did seem to lean more towards frantic than it did angry as they surveyed the pile, their attention jumping to anything that moved, as the pile continued to shift ever so slightly. Why they took such an interest in a pile of garbage you couldn’t have guessed.

Absentmindedly you fidgeted a bit, kicking away a small piece of scrap that had managed to end up on this side of the room after the collapse of the metal heap. The pinging noise of metal on metal drew the attention of the stormtroopers and the black masked figure, their heads whipping around and fixing on you, freezing you where you stood.

You cringed a bit, expecting with near certainty, that you were about to be berated or punished for causing such a commotion. “Sorry…” you muttered, preemptively apologetic.

“Come, we have further to go.” the masked figure stated plainly without acknowledging your apology, and turned and walking back the in the direction your group had originally come from.

Confused and completely taken aback you walked quickly to fall into formation as you had been when you’d first set out. Today certainly had been very strange, and you were loosing any energy you had left to question or even care about what was going on around you anymore.

Directions were never a strong suite of yours, but you could have sworn that your group was marching back the exact the way it had come. This was the most bizarre, pointless, and heavily armed field trip ever. You really hoped you be allowed to go back to your room so that you could attempt to sleep soon, but as the day had been going you knew you couldn’t depend on that.

The group made a few unfamiliar turns, placing you in an area of the craft that you no longer recognized from earlier in the day. Not long after that the group came to a halt before a towering pair of obsidian doors, everything inside you screaming for you not to go any further.

“Wait here.” The mechanical voice of the mask orders you with one last backwards glance before he proceeded through the double doors, shutting them behind himself as soon as he’s through. You definitely didn’t need to be told twice, there was no way in hell you wanted to go into that room anyways.

A few moments pass by in silence, but you don’t wait very long before the doors open again and the masked figure appears in the doorway.

“Come with me.” He commands and you hesitate at first, but slowly and reluctantly follow after him into the room. Your heart skips a beat as the doors shut behind you, sealing you inside the dark and oppressive environment with no one but your dark clad captor beside you. _Was this the execution room?_ The thought brings a wave of nausea with it.

Once you get to the end of the room a holo-communicator flicked on, and a seated, but still intimidatingly tall individual filled the room with a light blue glow.

“Supreme Leader Snoke,” The masked figure said, going down on one knee and inclining his head forward in a sign of respect. “I have brought the individual that has shown the signs that I’ve told you about.”

You stand awkwardly as the face of the alien being, twisted by age and deep scaring, regards you. It felt like the being was able to stare directly into your soul, despite the fact that it was only a hologram.

“Rise, Kylo Ren.” The being said with a gesture of his hand. “You have done well, now we can administer the final test.” As soon as the words are spoken a spherical med droid hovered down near you, a needle jabbing out of it and catching you quickly in the arm, drawing with it just a few drops of your blood. You frowned a bit, rubbing the place where you’d been pricked. You couldn’t even imagine what they needed with a blood test from you, but you were sure you wouldn’t understand even if they told you at this rate. Nothing was making sense anymore, so you didn’t even bother to ask.

The droid hovered down near the masked figure who you now finally knew had a name, Kylo Ren. He pressed a few different buttons on the med bot, flipping through different readouts before resting on the one he seemed to have been looking for. 

“As suspected there is an elevated midi-chlorian count,” He stated, causing you to furrow your brows, you had never heard of such a thing as midi-chlorians in your life. “It seems to be just over 10,000.”

“Hmmm,” Supreme Leader Snoke sat back. “Its not the best, but its not useless either, and certainly better than nothing.”

_Wow, just keep talking about me like I’m not even in the room. You thought What a bunch of assholes. Why is any of this even happening? The fuck is an elevated midi-whatever? Is it some kind of disease? Am I sick? Is this just some long build up to execution for smuggling data like a spy? Do they confuse their prisoners on purpose as some part of torture?_ These and other questions continued racing through your mind as the Supreme Leader and Kylo Ren discussed matters of midi-chlorians and “the Force” which you didn’t even begin to follow.

“There are many questions on your mind,” The Supreme Leader stated, turning their attention from Kylo Ren to look at you. You weren’t sure if he was actually able to read minds, or if he was just stating the very obvious. You assume the latter since it seems more likely. But if he really could read your thoughts you hoped that he caught the part about he and his lackey being assholes. “However, there is not time enough to answer them all now. You will come to know what you need in time. In the meantime, Kylo Ren, remove your mask so that your new apprentice might look at their master.”

There was a lot of weight that held on that statement, the tone of Snoke’s voice gave it much more depth than it had at face value. Kylo Ren stood still for moment, then raising both hands to the sides of his masked, he pressed a releasing mechanism, sliding the masking up and off of his head, resting it under his arm at his side.

You saw now a possible reason for the mask, standing on his right side your eyes immediately noticed the freshly healing scar marring most of the right side of his face. It looked like he’d gotten slashed badly, and very recently. He didn’t look at you, his eyes instead remained fixed on Snoke. You look away from Kylo Ren's scarred face, and back to Snoke.

“What is your name?” Snoke asks, looking down at you once again.

“[Y/N].” You answer.

“[Y/N],” Snoke says, rolling the sound of your name around on his tongue, “I sense much fear in you, [Y/N], much fear indeed. There is a way to escape the your fear though, and together we can help you find it.”

That statement struck a cord with you, an end to the fear? Impossible. How could he know anything of your fear anyways, he had to be bluffing. And yet… you found yourself wanting to believe him. The appeal of an impossible fix would always be tempting to anyone, especially when it was promised with such sincerity. You remained silent once again, allowing the offer to hang unaccepted, but at the same time not rejected. 

“Make sure you and your apprentice get some rest.” Snoke said, his tone dismissive. “Training will begin as soon as possible.”

Kylo Ren turns and begins walking away, and you turn to follow him, glad for the promise of getting rest.

“One last thing.” The hologram states, Kylo Ren pausing and turning to face it, allowing yourself to get your first full look at his face. Sure he had the scar that traversed most of it, but he didn’t look that bad really. He was still fairly handsome, and if anything you thought it added character to his face. Hopefully that wasn’t the only reason he chose to hide his face behind that dreadful mask.

“What is it, Supreme Leader?” Kylo Ren asks, his face and tone both carefully guarded and neutral.

“Do try to keep a better eye on this one,” the Supreme Leader tells him, and even you can hear the threat in his voice when he says it. “We wouldn’t want a repeat of past failures now would we?”

And with that final statement the hologram faded away, as soon as it was gone Kylo Ren fitted his mask into place and strode quickly from the room, forcing you to half jog to keep pace with him. You had no where to go but to follow him, seeing as you definitely weren't staying here, and you didn't know how to get back to where you'd come from.

“So, can I head back to block 5E and my room so I can rest now?” You ask, hoping you can get away from him, and the anger that suddenly seemed to be rolling off of him waves.

“No.” Kylo Ren’s mechanically distorted says shortly. “You will be kept under strict supervision from now on. You will stay by my side, where I can keep an eye on you, until I tell you otherwise.” The statement was harsh and final, clearly not up for discussion. 

So that was it then, you were metaphorically handcuffed to this Kylo Ren, for who knew how long. And he was in a bad mood. Excellent.


	4. Security

“We are still going to go rest, right?” You ask, as you continue to walk through the hallways, following after Kylo Ren, something you were now going to be doing a lot of apparently.

“Yes.” He replied shortly, not bothering to turn back and look back at you.

You didn’t push the subject, didn’t ask the million other questions whirring about your head, the gravity of your situation and all that had happened up until this point had turned the dull familiar ache of anxiety to a sharp and powerful agony that felt like it was simultaneously crushing and piercing your heart. That, along with your ever dropping blood sugar, was beginning to drive your mood downward.

After yet another long and silent walk you came to a pair of automatic double doors that were similar to the ones on your block, but which were instead marked “1A.” You watched Kylo Ren raise his hands towards the doors, opening them with a swiping motion.

The doors hissed closed immediately again after you had entered and you watched as Kylo Ren approached the control panel, inputing several codes before the lights dimmed and the display flashed red instead of green.  
“Lock down mode. Only top security clearance allowed.” Now appeared on the screen. What a shocker, he’d locked you in.

The inside was much smaller than your previous block had been, it only had 10 rooms total, five on each side. Rooms 0001–0010. You walked down the hall, following Kylo Ren’s lead yet again, to the lowest numbered rooms. You noted how much further apart the doors were, and knew that meant much larger and probably more luxurious interiors. Maybe you’d get a nice place to sleep after all.

Not surprisingly Kylo Ren occupied room 0001. He punched in yet another long line of code to allow you into the room and another set of codes to put his own room on lockdown as well, as he’d done with the entire block already anyways. He swept away towards the more inner rooms and raised his hand, beckoning you to follow him, and you did, getting more and more uncomfortable by the second. Walking down the hallway, following the billowing black fabric you wonder, and fear, why Ren was making you follow him. You had spyed a perfectly comfortable looking couch when you’d first entered, and you’d be more than happy to lay down in what you were wearing and just sleep there. 

Turning left down a hall and entering the last room on the right you arrive outside the room you really hoped you hadn’t been heading towards. His bedroom. Just how vulnerable you were suddenly seemed very apparent to you, if he wanted to overpower you, you wouldn’t stand a chance. You were completely at his mercy, and yet… somehow you sensed that he didn’t bear you any kind of negative intentions. You could feel that he wanted you under his control, but at the same time it felt like he didn’t want to hurt you.

Fear screamed against your inner senses though, and squashed any idea about his intentions being even remotely benign. It was the smallest act of defiance but you didn’t enter the room with him, instead standing and waiting outside the door. You didn’t have any business in his room, and the sooner you could return to the couch you’d already mentally claimed, the better.

“Can I go now?” You ask as he pushes in yet more pass codes to open what appears to be his closet door. How paranoid did you have to be to lock your closet? Then again, maybe there was something vile and repulsive enough hidden in there that it warranted a lock. Either way, you didn’t want to know, the knowledge wasn’t going to do you any good.

“No.” The mechanical voice said shortly again, already the sound of that mask saying ‘no’ to almost everything you said was starting to get on your nerves. “You’ll sleep in here for the night.” He told you, and motioned to the closet he’d just unlocked.

That was it, you were done with this shit. You turned your back to him, flipping him off as you walked back down the hallway towards your couch, anger seething within you.

You didn’t get far before an invisible force surrounded you and constricted, holding you firmly in place. You struggled to try to resist it, but it was futile. Kylo Ren’s approaching footsteps from behind you was the last thing remembered before your consciousness went blank, and darkness overtook your mind.

****

Upon awaking you find yourself shut inside a dimly room. Multiple pairs of black robes, and several other black garments hung above you, and several boots lay scattered on the floor. It wasn’t the largest or grandest closet ever but there was sufficient enough room for you to comfortably lay down.

You blink a few times, trying to remember what was going on, or how you’d gotten here. There was a pillow under your head, and a blanket draped over you. Groggily you tried to remember doing either of those things, and you definitely didn’t consciously remember getting into this closet. No… wait, you’d walked away and flipped off Kylo Ren when he’d suggested you sleep in here, and then… then you were frozen in place, and then… no other memories returned to you.

Conflicting feelings were beginning to rage inside of you. What a completed and absolute bastard that man was, if you could call him a man, he acted more like a child. He had restrained you, presumably knocked you unconscious and then locked you inside a closet, despite the fact that you’d made it abundantly clear that you didn’t want to go in there. All because Ren insisted on treating you like one of the most dangerous and cunning beings in the galaxy, when he couldn’t have been farther from the truth. It was ridiculous, and yet… you had a pillow, a blanket, and he, or at least somebody, had placed a small light stick down near your pillow so that you wouldn’t have to wake up in the pitch black. That would have been significantly worse.

So maybe he wasn’t entirely horrible, but you still hated him, and a pillow and blanket didn’t make up for being locked in a closet against your will. Being here on this ship in the first place had been against your will. You were going to pay him back for this somehow, you weren’t sure how, but somehow. You knew you would find a way, for no other reason other than your suborn determination. But for now, things were quiet, and you felt like you may actually be able to sleep a bit more. 

Laying your head down you allow your thoughts to drift away from your current situation, willing them to settle on something more peaceful. Exhaustion is gracious in helping ease your mind of thoughts, and soon you find yourself dipping into a light sleep. 

****

A loud hiss right in your ear and then sudden bright white light rips you right out of the only decent sleep you’d managed to get, forcibly returning you to reality.

Pulling the blanket over your head, and protecting your pupils from the light you reflexively shout “Fuck you!” at whomever had just disturbed your rest, remembering where you are _after_ the words leave your mouth. For the briefest second you’d thought you were back at the research base, back somewhere… safe.

There’s a long silence, but you don’t apologize for what you said. You had meant it, you just hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Self preservation was important to you after all. You lay there, blanket over your head, motionless, hoping that if you ignore them maybe they’ll somehow go away.

“Get up.” Is all you here after a few more moments of silence, and then the sound of Kylo Ren’s receding footsteps. From the sound of his voice you knew he was wearing the mask again, and you wondered if that meant that he slept with it on. You doubted it.

Well, you weren’t dead, so that was a good start to the day. You were still angry though, despite the fact that you were still able to get a bit of sleep. 

Walking down the hall after your appointed master you start to wonder if sleeping had been a good idea. You felt much worse now compared to before you’d slept. Your head ached, and your limbs felt heavy as you slowly shuffled down the hallway. Then, a smell caught your attention, and suddenly you found your mood lifting. Food.

It had been nearly 24 hours since your last meal, and you definitely felt it. If you got food out of this deal, you could set aside your hatred and act cordial, right? Of course you could manage to act polite, you were starving, and the hunger pains you felt were like raking claws trying to carve their way out of your body. Food first, worry about other things later.

Your olfactory senses had been correct, in what appeared to be the dining area of Kylo Ren’s personal room, there was a table laid out with a variety of food. You recognized a few of your favorite foods mixed among the assortment, meaning not only did you get to eat, but it was probably going to be one of the best meals you’d had in years.

You hesitated before you sat down and began digging into the food, “May I?” You ask.

“Of course.” Kylo Ren replies, with a nod, but he doesn’t sit down himself. You didn’t need any more permission though, you sat down with a plate and loaded it up with whatever your heart desired. Before you started eating you glanced up at Kylo Ren who was still standing, attention pointed in your direction.

“Not going to eat?” you ask, making an honest effort to sound nice.

“I already did.” he responded.

“Well, do you want to sit down at least?” you ask with a gesture towards the chairs on the other side of the table.

He remains silent, and just as you were beginning to give up hope on trying to act friendly he moved, and pulled out a chair, sitting down across from you. It gained him a small and brief smile from you, but you didn’t think about it long before you set to work on eating and regaining your strength. 

“So… is there a reason why you wear that mask?” you ask, once you were mostly finished with your food.

It felt like he was confused by that question. “Yes.” he said in response, offering no further explanation.

“Well we are in your personal quarters right now, so do you _need_ to wear it right now?” You asked, pushing the matter. You really hated that damn mask.

His hands move slowly, but he places them both on the sides of his mask, pressing the release mechanism that allowed him to lift it off of his head. You heart skips at the sight of his face again, but after that you feel relief. It was good to see another human face instead of a mask. 

“That’s better.” you tell him with a smile, but he doesn’t respond, and now chooses to fix his attention anywhere that isn’t you. “Thank you.” you tell him softly. 

“You’re welcome.” He responds, his low voice much softer than yours. 

“Don’t ever lock me in a fucking closet again.” you state, softly, but seriously. 

You’re happy when you catch the light smirk that your remark brings to his face, “I won’t.” He replies, “After today I won’t need to anymore.” 

“Why… what’s happening today?” You ask, not certain what his statement could mean. 

“You’ll be getting fitted with an internal security device.” 

“An _internal security device?_ ” You ask in disgust, any ideas of being polite were now far from your mind. You were right back to hating him. “What the fuck is an internal security device!?” 

His face remained calm, but you could feel that your sudden outburst had upset him. _Why did you keep thinking that you knew what he felt?_

“Its nothing more than a precautionary measure.” He stated, getting up from his seated position. You stand as well, thinking you’d be off and forced to follow after him somewhere, but instead he slowly walked around to your side of the table as he approached you. “As long as you continue to do as your told, you won’t even notice that its there.” 

“That doesn’t answer my question.” you said, remaining rooted to where you stood as he continued his slow approach towards you. “But there’s no way I’m letting you put any kind of security device inside of me.” 

Kylo Ren took the last few steps, closing the distance between you, putting him within arms reach.“Unfortunately for you, I wasn’t asking your permission.” He tells you, taking one more half step towards you, so that you’re nearly touching and his face was looming over yours. 

“Don’t be afraid.” he says in what is meant to be an assuring voice, but it does nothing to assure you. “It will be over soon.” He murmurs, leaning in towards you ever so slightly. Fear immediately flares up in you, but before you can respond he reaches his hand up and places it before your face. It less than a second of him doing so you feel your conscious being swept away for the second time, but this time there’s a delay before you completely fall into unconsciousness. A few brief moments of half awareness before fading into total darkness. In those moments you feel yourself fall, but you also feel arms wrap around you and catch you before you hit the ground, scooping you up and cradling you against their chest. After that, the darkness begins to pull you under, and the sound of his heart beating in your ear is the last thing you hear as everything else fades away around you. 


	5. Training

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cleaned this up on 1-23-2016 
> 
> I proofed it a bit too late last night when I was apparently fairly out of it… So there were quite a few mistakes. My appologies, I think I fixed most of it. :E

It was lucky for Kylo Ren that he wasn't around when you woke up, because you were unbelievably angry. How could anyone have thought it was alright to continuously do things to you against your will. You hadn’t wanted to be taken aboard this ship, you hadn’t wanted to be stuck with _him_ , and now you really didn’t want to have an internal security device. The only kinds of these devices that you’d heard of were the ones they used for slaves on the planets of the outter rim. If you had one of those in you, and you left whatever your specified perimeter was, you would end up sprinkled across the galaxy, right after your security device detonated. That was definitely not the way you wanted to die.

At least you’d woken up on the couch this time, and not locked inside the closet. But somehow sleeping in a closet suddenly felt favorable, at least when the alternative was having a bomb embed in an unknown part of your anatomy.

Once you’d given up on sleep and boredom had gotten the better of you, you got up to investigate, suspecting that you might be alone. You hadn’t seen, or heard movement of any kind since you’d woken up.

The room where you had eaten breakfast earlier in the day was your first destination. May as well check if there was any food left over first, or possibly there would be more food set out by now.

You arrive in the kitchen, and find that there isn’t food on the table, but there are several other things. A holo-reader, and a holo-communicator catch your eye, and you move to investigate those first.

Picking up the holo-communicator you notice the readout indicating that there was a new message that was waiting to be listened to. You clicked the playback button, and Kylo Ren’s hologram appeared in your palm. He was wearing that mask again, but why? This was a private message, and the only thing the mask did was make it more difficult to understand him.

“If you’ve found this message then you’ve found the other items that have been left for you as well. Look after this holo-communicator, it is yours now and will serve to keep you in contact with myself, and anyone else in the Order who may need to speak with you. Keep it with you at all times. The rest of the items should explain themselves.  
I will be returning after a few days, when I return your training in the Force will begin.”

And with that, the small figure of Ren blinked out of existence and signaled the end of the message. You glanced down and finally realized that the heap of black and grey fabric was actually a new set of clothes. You picked it up and examined it, thinking it looked reminiscent of what Kylo Ren wore, but the shirt was a warm grey instead of black. The rest of the outfit was black though, black pants, boots, belt, and robe. It was so much black, but when you tried it on it fit perfectly, and it was easy and comfortable to move in.

Brushing your new cloak aside you clipped the holo-communicator to your belt, picked up the holo-reader, and walked over to the couch, savoring the quiet stillness of solitude while it lasted.

* * * *

Despite being short lived, you throughly enjoyed your three days reprieve from responsibilities while it lasted. You’d gotten to read quite a lot, and because of it you were starting to feel a bit less confused than you had a few days ago. The holo-reader and you had spent a great deal of time together over those three days. It had been set up so that you could access and read anything in the Order’s archive that wasn’t classified or passcode protected. Not to mention a few things had been conveniently bookmarked, giving you an excellent starting point for your studies.

You’d read up on the internal security device that was in you first. Turned out it was more of a glorified tracking chip than it was a security device. The device was placed internally and connected to the nervous system, its main function being precise location tracking, but it could also deliver a shock, overloading the nervous system, and rendering its subject incapacitated if they ventured beyond their set perimeter. From the information you pulled up it seemed your perimeter had been set as the entirety of the large ship you now occupied. It was definitely better than the threat of getting blown up, but still not ideal. It was nice knowing it wasn't lethal though, it made you hate Ren a bit less for doing it to you. Only a bit though.

Other good reads had been “The History of the Galactic Empire”, “The Employee Handbook of the First Order” (it had made you laugh more than anything had in a long while), “Sith: the True Warriors of the Force”, “How to Kill a Jedi”, and several other related articles and other bits of information.

Overall, feeling fully rested was the best part of all of this, even if you had been sleeping on a couch this whole time. You’d debated sleeping in the bed the first night you were alone, Ren obviously wasn’t going to be using it, but you decided against it. All things considered, the couch was where you had felt the most comfortable.

The restful sleep along with the regular meals had helped to abate your anger towards your captors quite a bit, you now found that it was more of a slow smolder of resentment, instead of the raging inferno of hate that it had been earlier. It had been a very rough start, getting captured, screamed at, locked up, but… it could have been worse. No one had really hurt you… yet.

* * * *

  
It had been four days now since you’d woken up and found yourself alone. You were reclining comfortably on the couch, holo-reader in your lap as had become your routine. The hiss of the door drew your attention away from re-reading “The History of the Galactic Empire”, and instead of seeing a droid like you were used to, Kylo Ren instead appeared in the doorway. His sudden dark figure caught you off guard, and the only response you had to his sudden arrival was to stare at him.

He glanced at you briefly before sweeping past and heading in the direction of his bedroom. You weren’t sure what else you expected. He was just so… distant and guarded, but despite the careful facade he wore at all times the emotions you sensed from him were always anything but calm.

You’d thought you had been imagining things before when it had felt like you could sense his emotions, but after you’d done some reading it was starting to seem more plausible. Even though most texts containing mention of Force powers were password protected, you’d read a few passages that referenced those who were ‘Force-sensitive’ as it was called called it, being able to sense the emotions of others. You hadn’t gotten to read any further though, all further information on the matter was out of your reach, either classified or protected by passwords that you didn’t have.

As you consciously tried to pay attention to Kylo Ren’s emotions now, you felt the usual hum of anger and irritation, but mixed in was also a light sense of relief. You thought he was probably just happy to be back home. If this wasn't a figment of your imagination and you truly were able to sense his emotions like you thought you could, it felt like it could be a potential advantage.

When he came back in after several minutes you looked up and gave him a small brief smile, something you’d already decided you’d try to do as often as you could. In your experience smiling was simplest way of communicating your lack of ill intentions, and was the quickest way to begin fostering a friendship. Friendship was probably _much_ too lofty of a goal in this circumstance, but you’d more than happy if he was just a bit less hostile.

He didn’t show any outward response to the smile, especially since his face was coved by the black and chrome mask again, but you thought you'd felt the hum of anger waver just a bit for a moment. It felt like it wavered more out of confusion than anything, but it was something.

“Are ready to begin your training?” He asked.

“Yep.” You replied promptly, clicking off the holo-reader and standing up.

“Good.” He reached into his cloak and drew out a metallic object that you recognized immediately, having just read about it a day ago. Even just having seen pictures of them in the texts of the archives you could still barely believe what you were looking at. In Kylo Ren's hand he held a lightsaber. “From this day forward, this," he said, indicating the saber in his hand, "will be your most important tool.” As he finished his sentence, he extended his arm, holding the hilt of the lightsaber out to you.

Getting up you slowly walked to where Kylo Ren stood, offering you the lightsaber. Anticipation grew with each step you took towards it, how in the world had you gotten so lucky. One thing was for sure, this definitely made up for a lot that had happened so far. Slowly raising your own hand you took it from him with reverence, and amazement. When you’d been reading about them it had been mentioned how most lightsabers, and the crystals to make them, had either been destroyed or lost over the millennia, making them extremely rare in this day and age. Meaning you held in your hands something that was more or less invaluable. 

You stared at it, stunned that _he_ was actually giving this object to _you_. You stopped staring at it as reality finally started to sink in, and smiled up at Kylo Ren again, “Thank you.” You told him with simple honest gratitude. It was very difficult to smile at that mask, but you were going to keep forcing yourself to do it anyways. Hopefully the effort would yield results over time.

“These weapons are incredibly scarce.” He replied, a very serious warning tone in his voice. “Take great care not to loose it.”

You nodded, “Yes, of course.” He didn't have to tell you twice.

“I will be your master and teacher in the ways of the Force now, so you will refer to me as your master, and you'll refrain from questioning my judgement on any matters.”

“Yes, of course, _master_.” You couldn’t keep an edge of sarcasm from creeping into your voice, this felt completely ridiculous to you and you really didn't care to call anyone master. Especially not him.

There was a beat of silence and you could tell even your slight show of disrespect had stoked the fire that was his anger. “Always be mindful of your place.” He warned you, and you nodded.

 _Don’t make him angry, just don’t make him angry._ you remind yourself in your head.

After a few moments of silence he spoke again, “Follow me, I will take you to the training area.”

As he left you followed after him, excited to get to see something outside of this room.

 

* * * *

 

The training area was a large and expansive room on one of the lowest levels of the ship. Aside from the heavily reinforced metal walls it seemed more or less like a small hanger, just lacking any crafts. There were crates and other miscellaneous things scattered about on the periphery, but the center was clear and open. Plenty of room for moving around.

Kylo Ren strode to the center of the room, and stood there, waiting. You stopped and stood a few paces away from him. Something had changed in his posture and his feelings felt like they'd been turned off. It was an odd but not unwelcome change, but for some reason it didn't feel like a good thing.

“Ignite your lightsaber.” He commanded you, and you already knew you couldn't disobey him. Maybe, just maybe if you did what you were told you'd still be able to scrape your way out of this more or less intact.

Unclipping your saber from its place on your belt, you hold it in front of yourself trying to calm the emotions that were mixing and swirling inside of you. Hitting the switch you watched the beam burst forth, humming with energy, and casting a red glow all around you.

Kylo Ren mirrored you, unclipping and drawing out his much more menacing looking lightsaber. You noted how much more unstable the beam in comparison to yours. It  wavered and crackled in the still air, sending off sparks every now and then. 

“Now what?” You asked, you had a very bad feeling about the direction the situation had taken.

“Now I will try to kill you.”

Your heart leapt with immediate panic, as far as you could tell had genuinely meant that. _Was this why he'd shut down his emotions?_  You were certain the answer was yes, but before you could think Kylo Ren lunged at you, quickly closing the short distance. You barely had enough time to raise your saber to keep his from slicing through your head. The popping and snapping noise of the of the energy beams colliding and repelling each other made you flinch and jumped backwards. Your eyes flew to the door you'd come in from and you hoped you'd somehow be able to get to it and get away to a _nywhere_ but here.

You kept your saber up and blocked his attacks as best you could as he continued his advance, and you continued your backwards retreat. This was insane, you’d never even  _fought_ with a lightsaber before, hell you’d barely fought at all in your life. You’d been shot at a few times, gotten into a few physical altercations, but _nothing_ like this.

Panic exploded across all your senses as the lightsabers hummed and crackled, slicing through the once calm air. Narrowly dodging and blocking each successive hit your panic continued to grow. There was no way you'd be able to keep up the defense much longer, already you were beginning to tire. Meanwhile Kylo Ren seemed to only be getting faster and more aggressive with his strikes. It seemed he'd been holding back from the beginning, explaining how you were still somehow alive, but it seemed like his self restraint was falling with each passing moment.

You traversed most of the room as he carefully steered the direction of the fight away from any possible escape routes. Continuing to deflect his flurry of blows, and staying out of range of his lightsaber was getting more difficult now. Odds of survival were almost nonexistent at this point.

The attacks from him stop for a moment, and he pauses where he stands in the center of the room, lightsaber held at his side. You don't care what has caused his momentary hesitation, you take advantage of it, continuing to retreat towards the nearest door. This may be your only hope for escape, and survival.

“Are you ever going to _try_ to attack me?” He taunts you as you retreat, holding his arms open in mock vulnerability.

You just shook your head, continuing your backwards walk towards the door, your pace picking up with each step. If you put just a bit more distance between the two of you, you could turn and run and just _maybe_ make it to the door before he could catch up to you.

“So be it.” He said, and then rushed forward again just before you were about to turn and run. You knew for certain then that he'd been holding back up until now. His speed was blinding, it was like he'd only been showing only one tenth of what he was capable of up until that point. With one quick sweeping motion he disarmed you, throwing it across the room. Then he swept your feet out from under you with a kick, sending you falling backwards toward the ground.

Your back slammed hard onto the metal beneath you, sending all the air whooshing out of your chest. You hear the clanging of your lightsaber landing on the ground several feet away just before the red beam of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber rushes toward your neck to slice off your head.

You squeeze your eyes shut, not expecting to open them again, but… second after second passed, as you continue to hear the hum of Ren's saber in your ear, and feel the heat of it on your face. Slowly you cracked open your eyes and you saw Kylo Ren standing over you, lightsaber held to your neck, but not moving.

For what felt like an agonizing amount of time, but was actually probably only a few seconds, Kylo Ren remained like that. Then he straightened up, and extinguished his lightsaber, clipping it back onto his belt. The fight was over.

He stood watching you for a while, likely he was waiting for you to get up, but you still couldn’t move. The fear of what you had thought was going to be your imminent death had frozen you where you lay. You managed to half sit up, but you felt queasy, your head ached from hitting the ground after your back had, and your limbs all felt heavy. Standing wasn’t a good option right now. Just breathing was difficult enough, your breath coming in short rasps as you struggled to get your panicked emotions under control.

Ren continued to stand and watch you struggle to breath where you sat up on the ground. You couldn’t sense what he was feeling anymore so you had no idea if he was just confused as to what to do with you, or if he was getting ready to kill you in some other way. Your own raging fear overrode any possible external input.

Raised his hands to the sides of his helmet, Ren did the last thing you thought he'd do. He engaged the releasing mechanisms on the sides of his helmet, sliding it up over his head and held it by his side as he’d done before.

“You fought well for your first time.” He complimented you, not that you were interested in such compliments right this second. It hadn't sounded that sincere anyways.

“I though… you were going… to kill me.” Was all you managed to gasp out in response.

“I said I would _try_ to kill you.” He clarified, a small smirk coming to his face. “Not that I’d actually follow through with it.”

You let out a groan and let yourself flop back against the floor with a thud. Now that the threat had passed, your heart rate and breathing could start to return to normal. Not to mention it had been nice to see Ren _without_ the helmet on, a face was a nice change from an expressionless mask.

“Come,” he said, and you sat up to see he was holding his hand out to help you up. “I think you’ll find meditation to be more relaxing.”

You grabbed his hand and accepted the help up, mostly because you legitimately needed it. Your legs still felt weak after the shock thinking you were really going to die.

Before you left the training room Kylo Ren raised his hand, and your lightsaber flew into his grip from across the room.

“Try to hold onto it better next time.” Kylo Ren tells you, half teasing half serious. You took your saber from him purposefully ignoring the quip, and clipped it back into  place on your belt, grateful to have it back with you. Even for the few moments you’d been away from it, you had missed it. With your lightsaber secured Ren fit his helmet back into place and led the way out of the training room, and back through the ship. Hopefully you were done with near death experiences, at least for today.


	6. Meditation

Meditation wasn’t nearly as relaxing as you thought it was going to be.

 

Once you’d gotten back to Kylo Ren’s living quarters he’d led you to a relatively empty side room and ushered you in, directing you to sit on the ground next to him. You did, thinking you would enjoy some peace and quiet. However, the only instructions you’d been given were to ‘clear your mind’ and ‘feel the force.’ Both tasks felt impossible to you at this moment, but sitting still and remaining quiet was easy enough.

 

The entire exercise felt pointless as you sat there, minute after minute slowly crawling by in silence. Time felt like it was taunting you, elongating into a silentinfinity with no end in sight. It was at least a good opportunity to reflect on what had just happened, the memories still fresh and vivid in your mind. In hind sight it now seemed obvious that Kylo Ren was never actually going to kill you. Recalling the details of the fight you realize that there were a lot of gaps in your defenses, and more than one opportunity where he could have easily wounded or killed you had he wanted to. You should have known you couldn’t have lasted that long in a real lightsaber duel especially when it had been your first time holding one. Some good had come out of it thought. You knew he didn’t actually want to kill you. Hell he barely even seemed to want to hurt you.

 

“You’re thinking.” Kylo Ren’s voice, unobstructed by the mask, broke the silence.

 

“Sorry…” You mumbled, wondering if he’d heard what you were thinking about.

 

“When you can quiet your thoughts, you will quiet your emotions as well.” He told you, his own voice calm and level. “Then you will be able to feel the Force as it flows through and around you.”

 

Part of you wanted to believe him, believe that you really would be able to feel the Force. The other part was still skeptical, especially of your capacity to use or even feel it. Either way you wanted to actually try, it was the only way to find out for certain.

 

You brushed away thoughts of the past, the future, and focused on this present second. Nothing else existed except right now this moment. It was hard to keep your mind silent, focusing as hard as you could on not thinking, but it got exponentially more difficult with each passing second. How was it possible to think nothing at all for even more than a few seconds, you wondered. How could he even tell when you were thinking anyways, could he actually hear your thoughts? Could he hear this right now?

 

“You’re still thinking.” Ren said, more a statement of fact than it was a rebuke.

 

Remaining silent at the rhetorical statement you redoubled your efforts to calm yourself and quiet your mind. You had to keep trying, especially if he was listening in on whatever you were thinking. Even with that motivation you still found yourself struggling to keep your thoughts from running through your mind. Trying to get your mind to be silent was like trying to put a youngling on stimulants to sleep. Despite the fact that thoughts kept frequently popping up in your mind, Ren didn’t speak up. Instead he left you to wonder if he really could read your thoughts after all. Maybe he’d just been guessing earlier, or maybe everyone had trouble concentrating their first time. Either way, you still needed to keep playing the quiet game for now.

 

Several minutes passed without interruption, and for a moment you thought maybe you were starting to do something right, but a sigh from your right told you otherwise.

 

“You think so much that it makes it difficult for me to concentrate.” He said, his growing frustration was beginning to peak through to the surface.

 

“Well if you if you don’t want to hear my thoughts then don’t listen to them.” You retorted, getting more bold as your own frustration grew.

 

“I’m not _listening_ to your thoughts,” he clarified, “I’m _feeling_ the emotions that they generate.”

 

“So… you _can’t_ read my thoughts?” It would be nice if that was the truth.

 

Another sigh came from Ren. “Its much more… _complex_ than that.” Ren told you.“But if you’re wondering if I can listen to them the way you’d listen to a live transmission, the short answer is no.”

 

You weren’t sure what to make of that answer, but it was good to hear that he wasn’t listening in on your every thought.

 

“What’s the long answer?” You asked, curiosity getting the better of you. Plus the more you could get him to talk the less time you’d have to sit in silence.

 

“It doesn’t matter.” He stated, ending the subject. “What _does_ matter is being able to train you to feel the Force.”

 

“What if I’m not actually able to use it?”

 

“You can.”

 

“How can you be sure?”

 

“I am.” Kylo Ren’s tone was final.

 

There were a few moments of silence, and you thought you were going to go back to meditating when the sound of movement caught your attention. It was an obvious sound since neither of you had moved besides to speak this entire time.

 

Looking down you saw Kylo Ren was holding his hand out to you, palm up.

 

After a few seconds you asked “What?”, unsure if he wanted you to take it or place something in it.

 

“Take my hand.” He told you.

 

You started to reach for it, but hesitated. “Why?” you asked, not trusting what this might be. Most of your experiences with him up to this point had been anything but pleasant, and for that reason you suspected this wouldn’t be either.

 

“We need to speed up your training process.”

 

“And, what’s this going to do to speed it up?” You asked.

 

“You need to stop asking questions and _listen_ to me.” Kylo Ren’s patience was beginning to slip. He held his hand out more deliberately this time. Even though you still didn’t want to it didn’t seem like you had a choice. Reaching out your hand you placed it into his lager gloved one, appreciating the soft feel of the leather and the warmth of his hand underneath it. His hand closed and enveloped yours, holding it in place with only the slightest amount of pressure. Briefly you had time to wonder when the last time you’d held hands with someone was before everything that had once been your perception of the world was swept away.

 

For the first few disorienting moments your senses temporarily left you. You couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell, everything was gone, except for the feeling of Kylo Ren’s hand around yours. That, and everything felt like it was underwater now, or, that was the best way you could think to describe it. You could feel… something, all around you. It was neither warm nor cold and it swept through and around you. It was the strangest sensation you’d ever felt, but somehow, it was somewhat familiar at the same time. Like it had been there all along. You knew then, this was the Force.

 

“Do you feel it?” Ren asked quietly.

 

“Yes.” You barely breathed out your response. For once you actually wanted to stay quiet. It felt so serene sitting here, feeling the Force flow and swirl around you. You hadn’t felt this at peace since… since you couldn’t remember when. It felt like something had been switched on inside of you, a part of you that was long dormant finally coming to the surface.

 

“If you learn how to focus,” Ren’s kept his voice low and soft, preserving as much of the silence as he could. “you can direct it. Make it do your will.” He raised the hand that wasn’t currently holding onto yours and pointed it in the direction of a shelf. At once you felt the Force around you swirl and change in response to what Kylo Ren was doing. A spherical droid raised off the shelf, nothing visible was holding it, but you could sense the force move and drift around it as Kylo directed it to float towards where you were sitting. With a soft clanking of metal on metal he set the sphere on the ground in front of you.

 

“One of the easiest Force skills to learn and use, is to push objects.” He raised his hand, and you felt the Force swirl around it and then propel itself outward in a stream, sending the droid rolling across the floor away from you. His fingers twitched and the flow of the Force revered itself, wrapping around the sphere and drawing it back to where you were sitting.

 

“Try it.” He told you, sounding more confident in you than you would have preferred.

 

You held up your hand and your doubts and thoughts quieted as you allowed your instincts to guide your actions. You listened as they told you how to focus the Force and direct it as you’d just seen done. It took a few moments, but slowly the Force began to twist and swirl around arm as you focused on pushing the droid. If felt reminiscent of exhaling, as the Force flowed forth from your hand in a steady stream. It wasn’t as strong as the one Kylo had produced, but it was enough to make the droid roll a few inches along the floor.

 

Elation and joy from what you had just done welled up within you, but your moment of triumph was cut short by the alert tone of a communicator.

 

Ren let go of your hand as he moved to check the message he’d just received. As soon as he let go, the sensation of feeling the Force faded dramatically, but it was still there and you could still feel it. It faintly wisped around the periphery of your senses, a ghost of how it had felt before. Being able to feel the Force with such clarity again was now one of your only desires in life. No matter what it took you would find a way to master meditation, move objects, grab them, and whatever else the force was capable of doing. You wanted to learn it all.

 

“Seems we have a meeting to go to.” Ren said, a slight scowl on his face as he looked at the communicator.

 

“We?” You asked, hoping the meeting wasn’t about you.

 

“Yes, we. From now on you’ll be accompanying me wherever I go.” Ren told you. “Its the quickest and most practical way for me to teach you.”

 

You shrugged, “Alright.” It was better than sitting here all alone.

 

* * * *

 

“I want you to practice your abilities in every situation from now on.” Kylo Ren told you, his voice obscured once again by the voice synthesizer in his helmet. Together you strode through the cooridoors of the starship, heading towards the room where your meeting was being held.

 

“ _Every_ situation?” You asked, looking for clarification.

 

“Yes,” He affirmed. “ _every one_. Including this one now.”

 

You looked around at your surroundings. The walls and ceiling were bare for the most part except for some wiring and tubing that was likely attached to something important. Wouldn’t due to mess with any of that. In the halls themselves pairs or groups of storm troopers would walk by intermittently, as well as the occasional cleaning droid.

 

“What do want me to do, push someone over?” You asked. You were being mostly sarcastic, but you weren’t sure what else there was to practice on. There were the droids, but you liked droids more than you did most people.

 

“I don’t _care_ what you do as long as you’re doing _something_.” He said, and that was all the permission you needed. For the rest of your walk to the meeting you practiced trying to use the Force by focusing on using it to try to push one of the troopers feet at just the correct moment to trip them. Turned out it was harder than it sounded.

 

When you hadn’t had much success after several attempts you decided to switch up your technique and try to push their feet from behind. Up until now you’d been trying to push at their feet as they walked towards you, hoping to trip them in the same way sticking a foot out would have. However, you didn’t seem to be able to create a strong enough push to do much of anything. But maybe if you positioned yourself behind them and pushed with the momentum of their foot on their forward stride it would be enough to set them off balance, stumble, and hopefully fall.

 

Sure enough, your new strategy soon paid off. As a group of troopers walked by you sized them up and picked out one in the middle as your target. You carefully paid attention to the rhythm of his stride as he walked past, and just as they were passing by, you pushed on the trooper’s heal from behind at the perfect moment, causing his stride to be suddenly much longer than he was expecting.

 

The sudden unexpected push to the back of his foot had been enough to set him off balance. As he stumbled and began to fall he reflexively grabbed onto the nearest thing to him, another stormtrooper, and ended up dragging that one down with him. It set off a small domino effect, one trooper after another falling over and taking someone down with them. Soon, after a whole lot of thunking sounds and lot of cursing, most of the group was on the ground. Never before had you known how satisfying the sound of multiple pairs of armor clunking onto the floor could be.

 

The commotion was enough to cause Kylo Ren to stop and turn around, as well as anyone else who had been around to hear. You had to cover your mouth to keep from laughing at this point. They would all probably be mad if you started laughing at them, especially because then they might realize you were the one who had caused it.

 

At first Kylo Ren’s masked face fell on the sight of stormtroopers fighting to get out of their tangled mess of limbs and armor, then he turned the blank expressionless mask back on you. He didn’t say anything out loud, but you knew he knew you had done it.

 

You kept your face as straight as possible as you waited to see how he reacted, but from what you could sense he didn’t feel angry, no more so than usual. He maybe even felt a tiny bit… amused? Even proud maybe? You couldn’t tell for sure. The weight of his hand on your shoulder as he gave it a brief patanswered your question. It was the smallest and quickest of gestures, but from him it felt like it meant a lot. You were glad he approved of the practice methods you’d chosen for yourself.

 

* * * *

 

In the meeting room you stood next to Kylo Ren in front of a large circular holo-projector, one meant for presentations. Several other generals and important looking higher ups stood circled around it as well. Currently a detailed star map of the galaxy was on display, different star systems highlighted in red, blue, and green. From your vague knowledge of current events you guessed that the red and blue star systems clustered in the middle belonged to the First Order and the Resistance respectively. However, you weren’t sure what the green star systems could be. They were all mostly on the outer rim. A few were a bit farther in, but only one or two were even remotely close to any of the other colored dots.

 

“As you can see from the map,” A young red haired man with a severe demeanor said addressing the group, “We have seen their influence continue to spread. Just this last week we’ve had seventeen more confirmed attacks.” The group stirred uneasily at this news, though you were still unsure what they were even discussing. “Although, as you know the actual number may be exponentially higher. For all we know, the entire outer rim may be under their control.”

 

“Damn it!” One of the more high strung looking generals exclaimed. The meeting had only just started and already he looked frazzled. “Do we even know what they are yet!?”

 

“Unfortunately we’ve not yet been able to identify them.” The red head stated, voice carefully neutral.

 

The statement sent a ripple of uneasy murmuring through the group.

 

“However we have gathered a lot more intercepted trasmission data in these last weeks, and it is more important now than ever for us to scan through it as thoroughly as possible. We need to find anything we can to identify them so we can learn how to destroy them.”

 

The meeting droned on from there. Kylo Ren never spoke the whole time, and you certainly didn’t either. Both of you stood and watched the generals debate and argue over hypotheticals, even though so little was known about the situation.

 

All that was known so far was that communications were ceasing from planets all across the outer rim. Some had sent brief distress signals before all communications ended, but none were specific. Only ever screaming about being attacked by something unknown. Still, for communications to be going dead over so many star systems was indeed great reason for concern. You were shocked you hadn’t heard anything about this earlier. Although from the lack of evidence produced by the situation it was a feat that the First Order knew as much as they did.

 

You weren’t surprised many of the generals wanted to send out droids and troops so that they could get a first hand look at what was going on. However many opposed the idea, stating the inherent danger, and how the Resistance was growing stronger every day and should be their first priority. Once they’d crushed the Resistance, the First Order would be free to rebuild and then go and confront whatever was lurking in the outer rim.

 

* * * *

 

The meeting had been dragged out for hours. The bulk of it was about nothing but the movements of the Resistance, and strategy plans for upcoming attacks against them. For the most part though it sounded like they were just small bases. Only a few dozen most were stationed at them from the intel that had been gathered. It was nothing of consequence to you and you were glad when it was over, especially since you’d heard no mention of the base that’d you had apparently been unknowingly working for. Maybe that meant they were still alive. Or that they were all already dead… You felt badly for them if that was the truth, but at the same time it was their fault that you were here to begin with.

 

“Kylo Ren,” The young red-haired general strode up to where you and Ren stood. “so good of you to join us.”

 

“General Hux.” Ren replied in a short greeting. You weren’t sure but you thought you detected a hint of animosity from both of them.

 

“Ah, so this will be your new apprentice.” Hux said, a forced smile on his face as he turned his attention to you, holding his hand out towards you. Already you didn’t like him, although Kylo’s feelings of resentment may have been swaying your opinion. You took his hand and shook it anyways, giving it one firm grip before letting go. You smiled quick and gave a nod, feigning politeness right back at him.

 

“Well good news,” He said, his grin becoming more genuine, “I’ll be making a proposal to the Supreme Leader tonight. I want to send a small scouting crew to go and investigate the outer rim while our troops here focus on dismantling the Resistance. That way we can effectively manage all of our problems at once.”

 

He seemed just a bit too excited about that for your tastes.

 

“I’m sure your campaign will continue to do as well as it has in the past.” Kylo Ren replied, and you felt like you were missing part of a punchline from the way he said it.

 

Turning and walking towards the exit, Kylo Ren made it clear that he was done with this conversation. You were happy to follow after him, having been done with all of this from the start.

 

“Oh, and Ren.” Hux called after him as you both left.

 

“You may want to pack when you get back to your room.” Hux told him, “I’ll be proposing that you and your new apprentice will be the ones to go and investigate the outer rim. It will make for good training I believe.”

 

Perhaps you were biased, but walking into the unknown seemed more like a suicide mission than training. Kylo Ren seemed to agree, his anger rising considerably as he continued to walk out of the room, not saying another word to Hux. You followed after Ren as he swept into the hallway at his usual fast pace, desperately hoping that the Supreme Leader would turn down Hux’s idea.


	7. Conflict

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I am so fucking sorry this took so long. D:  
> If you've stuck around this long hope you enjoy!

Walking quickly through the corridors of the ship you struggled to keep up with Ren, his long strides easily out pacing you. You could feel anger and frustration rolling off of him in waves but you had no idea why. It seemed like whatever General Hux had said had set Kylo off, but you weren’t entirely sure why. You knew so little about the situation that you’d found yourself in that Hux could have said something directly insulting and you would have never known.

The General was already in bad standing with you as far as you were concerned. You may not have directly disliked him, but you didn’t feel any fondness towards someone who had angered Ren this badly. Not because you were overly concerned with Ren’s emotional state, but because you were the one that would be stuck with him while he was like this.

By the time you reached your destination, you were half out of breath. You had been so focused on keeping up you hadn’t even bothered paying attention to where you were headed. Looking up now, you saw that the tall black obsidian doors loomed before you. You suppressed any fear you felt and fought to remain calm, all while hoping you wouldn’t need to go in.

“Wait here.” Ren commanded you as he had the first time, and you did. Only after he was inside with the doors closed did you let out a sigh of relief. As you stood outside and waited you glanced around and noticed there weren’t any troopers in sight, you were alone. You weren’t sure if this meant you were more trustworthy now or if Kylo Ren had been so angry that he hadn’t even thought about leaving someone to watch you. Didn’t matter either way, you weren’t planning on going anywhere at the moment.

Giving a shrug you leaned against one of the walls in the hallway that held the obsidian doors, preparing yourself to wait for an indefinite amount of time. However, it wasn’t long before you heard the sounds of footfalls growing louder as they neared the hallway. Looking up you saw General Hux striding quickly around the corner, a look of determination on his face. Unsurprisingly he felt angry as well, though his rage spiked when he caught sight of you.

“I should have known Ren would come here to try and undermine me.” Hux half grumbled to himself. You didn’t give him any reaction, sure that anything you could have said would have just made him angrier.

Pulling open the doors in a swift motion Hux moved to walk into the dark chamber, but hesitated.

"Don't you want to come in? This does concern you." His tone didn't fully match the words he was speaking. Likely he was up to something, and you didn't want any part of it.

 You shook your head in response. You clearly didn’t have any power over your own fate anymore anyways, and sometimes ignorance really was bliss. Plus the fact that Hux had recommended it made you not want to do it on principle.

"Suite yourself then." Hux told you as he pushed open the heavy doors and entered the room.

 As Hux was closing the door behind him you briefly heard Ren's raised voice, but the door was shut before you could make out what he was saying.

 Silence pressed around you again, making you even more aware of the raging emotions coming from the closed room. Normally emotions became more mute with distance, but out here you could still perceive them very clearly. Just as you werethinking how grateful you were not to be in there the door slowly opened.

 You waited to see which of them would storming out but no one came, and you could hear them both discussing something in raised voices inside.

Just as you were thinking about moving to close the door so you wouldn't have to listen, a voice echoed inside of your head.

 "Come." it said simply, and you knew immediately who it was and what it wanted, and that you couldn't refuse. You'd never had thoughts pushed into your head before, and you weren't sure why you didn't feel more uncomfortable about it. Perhaps all of excitement of the last few days was beginning to desensitize you. Regardless, you gloomily made your way inside, closing the door behind you with a thud. Then you braced yourself for what promised to be a volatile situation from the shouting you could hear much clearer now.

Once inside you saw that Kylo Ren and General Hux were standing and facing each other before the Supreme Leader who watched on as they argued. The Supreme Leader looked bored in your opinion, not even bothering to glance up once you came in.

"The resistance grows stronger every day,” Hux was shouting, “we cannot afford any delay."

Walking as quietly as you could you made your way towards where they were standing, moving towards Ren’s right side which would place him between you and the General.

“You don’t think I know that?” Ren retorted, his voice made even more menacing by the voice synthesizer of his mask.

Hux sneered at the mask as it loomed over him. “Your actions would say otherwise.”

“Enough.” The Supreme Leader sighed before Ren could respond, leaving a few moments of silence for their tempers to cool. “Thank you for joining us, [Y/N].”

Both Hux and Kylo Ren turned to look at you, taken aback by your sudden presence. Likely they had been so caught up in arguing that neither had seen or heard you come in, even though you now stood right next to them.

“Your welcome.” You said quietly, addressing the Supreme Leader. Hopefully whatever this little meeting was about would be over quickly.

“Tomorrow we will be landing on Yuuritt.” The Supreme Leader spoke, addressing all three of you. “Kylo Ren, you will come to me for your training as we had planned. You will leave your apprentice in the hands of General Hux, who can take them to the training grounds on the base. After you’ve completed your training you will have one week aboard your ship to train with your apprentice as you make your way to the outer rim.”

“Supreme Leader,” Kylo Ren spoke, his tone respectful. “you know as well as I that it takes more than a week to become adept at using the Force.”

“It’s a reconnaissance mission,” General Hux interjected. “you aren’t going into war.”

“The General is right.” The Supreme Leader said. “I will not hear any more of this.” And with that the holo projector flicked off, and Snoke’s image was gone from the room. Apparently that was the end of the conversation.

With the Supreme Leader no longer in attendance tension began to fill the room. Hux briefly looked at Ren, smugly content with his small victory, before he turned and walked out of the room, leaving you alone with Ren. The anger that radiated from of him was as strong as ever, like standing next to a raging fire.

After what felt like close to a minute passed, you opened your mouth to finally say something. However, just before you spoke Kylo Ren finally turned and walked at his usual fast pace out of the room. With a sigh, you followed after him. You had just started to get your hopes up that things would improve, but apparently it was going to be worse than ever now.

For now you continued to follow Ren as he made his way through the endless and nearly identical corridors of the ship. Finally he came to stop at a door that you hoped that you didn’t recognize. Once inside the room you knew you had recognized it. A large open room lay before, the training room. There no was way a fight with Kylo Ren was going to end well when he was this angry, and you knew it.

This was already the second time in less than 6 hours you had visited this place. If sparring was going to be this often, you were going to have a bad time. Aches still lingered in your muscles from the first time you’d fought, and you were pretty sure you weren’t any better at fighting than the first time you’d tried. Part of you wanted to object and point these things out, the other part of you knew that there was no way an enraged Kylo Ren would give a damn about your petty complaints.

Ren didn’t bother giving any verbal warning this time, but he didn’t have to. Something changed in his posture, it was subtle, but you knew what it meant. Pausing where you stood you allowed him to walk several paces in front of you before he finally did what you had been expecting.

By the time he ignited his lightsaber you already had yours in your hand, ready to deflect any blows that started flying your way. The moment after you’d ignited your lightsaber Kylo Ren struck immediately, brining his lightsaber up to strike downwards at you. The moment when he swung it upwards left one second of hesitation you knew that you could take advantage of. Without pausing to think you dodged to the right and moved to strike at his arm while he was still in the middle of his downstroke.

A quiet sizzling sound and a grunt of pain from the mask let you know that you’d hit your mark. It had been a grazing blow but you’d managed to just barely knick his arm above the elbow. But the second you did it, you regretted it. Burning anger erupted from him, and suddenly you found yourself struggling to keep up with the speed of the strikes that were coming your way. Apparently the slight wound hadn’t slowed him down as much as you’d hoped.

Keeping up with him was already reaching near impossible. As you had done in your first fight you tried to keep as much distance between him and yourself that you could. This time around was much more difficult. Ren was no longer holding back as much as he had before, and keeping your distance got more difficult with each passing second. As you continued deflecting blows you continued to tire, your reactions getting a bit slower. Eventually you let your guard down a bit too much for Ren’s liking.

Ren feigned to the right, and you raised your saber to block, but he quickly changed the trajectory of his blade and brought it down towards your left arm. It all happened in slow motion, the second Ren’s lightsaber didn’t connect with yours you knew you’d fucked up. Ren’s saber came towards your arm quicker than you could get out of the way, burning away the flesh as the blade grazed you.

Pain burst across your senses the moment the blade contacted your skin, but hearing and smelling your own flesh burning was what made it horrible. You regretted grazing Ren’s arm more than ever now. As you backed away from him there were a few moments where he paused, as if to let you take stock of how your arm was doing. Flexing your hand at all was out of the question, doing so tugged at the flesh that had been burnt away and felt like you would risk tearing the muscle if you persisted. The main brown and blacked burn didn’t even hurt at all though, and that worried you more than anything.

Now you were both angry. Kylo’s blade came swinging towards you, forcing you to abandon any hope for a reprieve. He was just too fast, his blade whirring and humming as it rushed through the still air. Desperately you fought to keep your blade up and blocking the incoming blows as best you could. Being one hand down your blocks were much less effective, and there didn’t seem to be any opportunity for you to do anything but block and try to stay out of his reach. You didn’t believe he was going to kill you, but getting hurt badly was a strong possibility.

Seconds dragged by now, you were beginning to breath heavier, sweat beading along your brow. Meanwhile Kylo didn’t seem phased, he was very obviously playing with you at this point. You were exhausted and had one arm uselessly and splinted to your side; he could have ended the fight at any time but instead chose to keep drawing it out, striking at random times as if to test if your reflexes were still working.

Just when you thought you wouldn’t be able to last much longer, you felt the same searing pain in your leg as you failed to block in time yet again. The unstable beam of Kylo’s saber bit into your left leg, burning another trench into your flesh, deeper than the first one. Involuntarily you cried out from the pain. If you didn’t get this fight to stop now you feared what other parts of your anatomy you’d lose.

Without thinking you ignored the pain in your limbs and allowed your anger to fuel you as you swung you saber towards Kylo Ren with as much strength and speed as you could muster. Kylo brought his own up to block and your blades locked, neither of you willing to budge an inch.

It was then, in your intensifying anger that a strange stillness came over you. Your hate for him, for all the things he had done to you, it was so strong that it had focused you, and you entered a state of mind that allowed you to be once again hyper aware of the Force around you. It was much different than how you’d felt it before though. Instead of feeling like a calm steady current of water, it raged and churned around you, wavering here and there as if on fire. You could feel it strongly though, which meant that you could use it.

However, before you decided what to do with this new found side to the force Ren quickly brought up his right hand, and faster than you could react you felt the Force crash into you and send you soaring backwards into the air.

You disengaged your saber while in midair but kept it gripped firmly in your hand as your back then head slammed into the metal ground with a gut wrenching crack.

There were a few moments of complete darkness before you found yourself several feet farther away from where you landed. The fact that you didn’t remember sliding there made you angry and irritated at the same time, because it meant he had given you a concussion.

 As soon as you gasped for breath you knew your ribs had broken. Breathing just a bit too deeply brought unbearable stabbing pain to the effected area on your right side. You weren’t angry anymore, instead a heavy dread was sinking into your stomach. There was no way you could fight anymore, you couldn’t stand, you couldn’t breath, you couldn’t defend yourself. If Ren persisted in this fight, you were going to die, or at the very least horribly exacerbate your injuries.

Just as you were pondering your fate, you heard the sound of Kylo Ren’s footsteps approaching you. When you looked up you saw that he was no longer wearing his helmet, and his face wasn’t angry, instead it looked very nearly apologetic. Watching him take those last few steps towards you was agony. You once had the tiniest amount of trust for him because he hadn’t physically hurt you, now that trust was gone.

“You fought better this time.” He said, voice low. Making the last few steps he stooped down on one knee in front of you.

“Yeah, you too.” You replied sarcastically.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” he said.

“Where was that attitude earlier?” You asked, still sarcastic.

There were a few moments of silence, and for one brief second you thought he was going to apologize. Instead, “I needed to be able to teach you this.” Kylo Ren told you, and raised his hand and gently placing it on your side over the ribs that had been broken. You initially wanted to pull away from the contact, but In a few seconds the pain began to recede until it was gone entirely.

"Try taking a full breath now.” He instructed you, and you did amazed to find that you could breath with no pain again.

“How did you…?”

“Using the Force to heal yourself will be the most useful thing I can teach you given the circumstances. Its difficult, but if you can master it the use of other abilities should come more easily.”

The fact that you could breathe again was relieving; taking full breaths felt very good at the moment. However, with the pain in your ribs gone your body now refocused on the two burnt gashes in your arm and leg. Strangely enough the worst looking parts that looked thick and charred barely hurt at all, it was the areas around them that hurt. Sitting very still was about the only thing that felt mildly comfortable now.

“Can it heal that?” You motioned towards the wound on your leg.

“Yes.” He replied, “I’ll help you to heal your head and your leg. You should be able to practice healing your arm on your own then.”

Taking your hand Ren guided it to the back of your head where you placed it palm down over a large swollen knot. He then placed his hand on top of yours and just as had happened earlier with meditation, you felt the Force flowing strongly around you. It gently flowed through and around you, back to its more peaceful and calm state.

Ren explained then the way to focus the Force to heal injuries, flowing it precisely into the effected areas that needed restoration. Thankfully with Ren helping you and lending his guidance and strength you were able to heal your head and your leg fairly quickly.

You stood, feeling much more drained than you had before, but Ren had explained that healing did take quite a lot of energy. You barely felt like walking right now, and you cringed internally wondering what else you would still have to do today.

Without a word Ren turned and started walking toward the door to leave, and you reflexively followed after him.

“Where are we going?” You asked, tired already.

“To rest.” He replied. You can remain in my room and practice healing yourself until we land in twelve hours.”

Relief washed over you, and you found the strength to make it back to room 0001, collapsing on the couch as soon as you were inside. Making yourself comfortable you settled in to begin work on healing your arm. Thankfully Ren left you alone, you needed some space away from him right now.

 

****

 

It was six hours before you were due to land and had your arm fairly healed at this point. It wasn’t fully healed just yet though, and the dull ache of it had kept you awake, long past the time the lights had dimmed to signal it was time to go to sleep. Woking on healing was becoming harder, you were too exhausted to properly focus or use the Force. Training in the morning was sure to be a blast if you got next to no sleep.

Closing your eyes you laid back, knowing that sleep wasn’t forthcoming, but hoping you could get some somehow. You weren’t sure how long you had laid there, if it had been thirty minutes, or an hour and thirty minutes. Thoughts kept spinning around your head at light speed, and there was no way for you to get them to stop. The cold emotionless atmosphere of the ship with its metal walls and harsh bright lights was psychologically wearing. There was no one for you to actually talk to anymore, and the only emotions you got off the people around you were usually anger or fear. You had been used to dealing with loneliness before, but you always had the hope that you might escape from it one day. You were beginning to lose that hope now.

Approaching footsteps distracted you from your own depressing thoughts, and you instead focused on listening intently while feigning sleep. As you listened they continued to get closer until they stopped right next to you, causing your heart rate to pick up.

“Can’t sleep?” Ren asked, helmet-less from the sound of his voice and apparently not fooled by your sleeping act.

You debated not responding and pretending you hadn’t heard him, but instead shook your head without bothering to open your eyes.

“Would you like help?” He asked softly, and it was then that you noticed the lack of his usual angry aura.

“I’m not sure I trust your brand of help anymore.” You replied.

“I won’t hurt you again.”

“Actions speak louder than words.”

There was no response as he gave you silence yet again instead of an apology. Reaching out he placed his hand on the top of your head, his fingers tangling in your hair. You were about to ask what the hell he was doing but sleep pulled you under before you could open your mouth.


	8. Bootcamp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah apparently it takes me a long time to write these things… My apologies, just trying to keep these chapters as quality as I can manage for you guys.
> 
> Hope you all had a wonderful Valentines Day! <3

Groggily you open your eyes the next morning, blinking from the bright light of the overheads. After allowing yourself a few moments to wake up and orient yourself you note the lack of pain from your previously burnt arm. Lifting it up and holding it before your face you see that all that remains of your injury is a fresh pink scar, shiny against your skin. Thinking back you recall that you hadn’t gotten that far when you had been working on healing it the night before, and obviously it wouldn’t have healed that quickly overnight. The only other explanation was that Ren had finished healing it after he’d put you to sleep.

Conflicted feelings once again fought within you, although the voice that warned of abuse was the loudest. No matter what he had promised, you knew you’d have to keep your guard up even more than you had before. These types of situations were nothing new to you, and neither were the empty promises that came with them. Ren could say whatever he wanted, but you’d be paying attention to what he did, not what he said.

While getting ready you were pleased to discover a fresh set of clothes had been left for you. The ones you were wearing yesterday, and had slept in, had nice long gashes in them from where you’d gotten struck with the unstable beam of Ren’s lightsaber. Looking at the burnt and torn fabric was enough to make you hurt just from the memory, and you were more than happy to part with it in favor of intact clothing.

Once Ren finally decided to get up and join you in the main living quarters you were already halfway through breakfast. Both of you nodded your greetings to the other, keeping the companionable silence. You were grateful he seemed to no longer feel the need to keep his mask on while it was only the two of you.

“Thank you for healing my arm.” You mentioned quietly after Ren had a chance to sit down and get some food himself. “And for helping me sleep.” you added, hoping to encourage similar good natured behavior in the future.

He gave no response to your statement but a nod. “You’ll need to keep practicing while I’m away.” He informed you.

“Of course.” You replied with a nod. You had already suspected you’d have more than a few opportunities to practice healing yourself while you were training with a stormtrooper battalion.

“Practice as much as you can, as often as you can.” He emphasized. “Time is against us know.”

You nodded in agreement. It was odd but you felt more a healthy dose of worry mixed in with his usual anger this morning. The dread coming off of him stirred up your own anxiety as you wondered what could worry someone like Kylo Ren. It would have been nice to have asked him, but he was never forthcoming with information. So instead, you both finished up your breakfast in relative silence.

 

****

 

The rest of the morning went by uneventfully as the star cruiser entered into orbit around Yuuritt, a small planet mostly covered by clouds. Any crew or personal that were scheduled to head down to the planet were gathering in the largest hanger on the ship. White armored stormtroopers hurried by in every direction, most hauling cargo onto ships, as the final preparations were made for departure.

Following behind Kylo Ren you approached a black shuttle with two large and distinctive vertical wings, made to look intimidating like everything else in the First Order. The interior of the ship seemed typical enough at least, plain metallic and lit by cold white lights like a tiny version of the star cruiser it resided on. Making your way past the first chamber of the ship that was intended for housing a small group of troopers, you entered a more comfortable interior chamber. Comfortable being a relative term.

Kylo Ren took a seat in one of the metal chairs along the wall, and you followed suite, sitting beside him. Sitting there you noted that you still sensed worry coming off of him mixed in underneath his anger. You tried to recall if you’d ever felt any sense of worry off of him before, and nothing came to mind. Still, you’d only known him a few days, there was bound to be much that you still didn’t know about his character.

A stirring of irritation from Ren drew your attention away from his worry, and just as you were wondering what could have irritated him in the silent and still room you heard the footsteps of another boarding the ship.

“Salutations to you both.” Hux greeted you as he entered the sitting room of the small ship, the door hissing closed behind him. The thought occurred to you how the General’s demeanor perfectly fit the description of someone who had a rod shoved up their ass.

Ren didn’t respond to Hux’s greeting, and you only gave a half hearted smile and nodded. The lack of enthusiasm didn’t seem to off put the General though.

“Would you like to sit over here?” Hux asked, addressing you and motioning to the seat beside him. “Ren has been in a bad mood lately, and if you haven’t noticed yet he has a tendency to… _lash out_ when angry.”

Hunched over and fists clenched, Ren really did look like he was in a bad mood. And given his outburst the previous night over what was starting today it wasn’t all that surprising. Although from your perspective you could sense that Hux was the cause for most of his anger at the moment. As soon as the General had begun to speak you could feel the heat of that anger intensify with each passing moment.

“I’m good.” You replied flatly without even shifting your position. If anyone was in danger of Ren lashing out at them it was Hux. Graciously your short and unreceptive reply ended the conversation and Hux remained quiet for the duration of the trip. The angry emotions around you cooled with each passing moment of silence. Why Hux thought it was a good idea to purposefully prod at Ren you would never know.

 

****

 

A slight lurch from the ship as it contacted with the solid ground alerted you to your arrival on the planet. During the approach you had allowed your mind to wander, imagining what the planet might look like underneath the clouds that obscured the surface. You imagined any number of different kinds of places, but more than anything you just wanted to go somewhere temperate, where the air outside didn’t hurt your face.

“Well, this is our stop.” Hux said, giving you a false smile and standing, motioning for you to follow. As the General strode off to depart from the ship you glanced back at Kylo who remained seated where he was. In response to your imploring gaze he inclined his head, motioning for you to follow Hux.

Frowning you nodded in grim acceptance and stood to leave the ship as well. It was only after you were off of the ship that you realized that Ren wasn’t behind you, and hadn’t gotten off the ship at all. You waited a moment to see if he was still coming but the shuttle’s ramp closed, and the ship took off once again, Ren still aboard.

“He’s not coming with us?” You asked, watching as the ship flew away.

“No.” Hux replied shortly. “He has more important matters to attend to than constantly keeping track of you.”

Frowning you begrudgingly followed after Hux as he walked down the landing pad towards the entrance of one of many interconnected metal buildings. The shuttle had dropped you off on one of many landing pads outside a large metallic facility that was built on top of and into the mountains of the planet. Combined the tall conical structures were the size of a small city. As you entered through the automatic doors behind Hux you were greeted with more steel walls and bright lights, the decor being a close cousin to the First Order’s star cruiser.

Traversing through the corridors of the facility you were glad to find that Hux was at least easier to walk with. His legs weren’t quite as long as Ren’s were and his pace wasn’t as angrily hurried. It was nice to just walk for once instead of half jogging. The walk was also made more pleasant when you noticed that most of the people around you weren’t in the storm trooper armor. You hadn’t seen this many human faces all at once in a long time. Everyone was wearing identical black uniforms though, a unique sequence of two letters followed by four numbers printed in the upper right corner of their shirts. Still, despite the uniformity the place did feel a bit more human than what you’d been used to.

After a short walk Hux came to the room he had been looking for. Punching in a code to the locked door it slid open and he ushered you inside. The room you found yourself in was moderately sized and seemed to be nothing more than a large waiting room with roughly a hundred people sitting in the rows of chairs that filled it. There were only a few in the room that had the white trooper armor on, standing around like prison guards. One of which had the red shoulder pauldron that indicated their rank as squadron leader.

The General directed you to wait where you were and approached the squadron leader, speaking in a low tone that you couldn’t hear. After only a few moments their conversation was over and the General was walking back towards you with a more genuine smile on his face

“Welcome to your new home.” The General told you, truly happy for once about what he was saying. “Your security device has been re-calibrated, with the new perimeter being set as this facility. You will remain here with the other troops and go through basic training until either myself or Ren comes to fetch you.”

“I thought _you_ were supposed to be watching me.” You stated.

“Like Ren I too have more important matters to attend to than dealing with _you_.” Hux replied, his usual irritation creeping back into his voice. “Good day then.” He gave a final nod, and you could sense he was delighted to leave you with someone else and go about his own business. A pang of abandonment tugged at your chest as you watched Hux disappear through the door, but at least he’d bothered to say good-bye to you.

Glancing around you took in the room and those around you. A few had looked up to see the new person who had joined them, but for the most part people remained motionless, staring at the ground. It made you uneasy observing the situation, they all seemed so… broken. Like most of them had given up, or never even had, any hope in life and were just going through the motions like zombies. Perhaps thats why they had the stormtroopers keep their helmets on at all times, to hide the dead look of despair that was sunk into their faces.

Not everyone in the room looked broken, though. There were still a few somewhat defiant looking faces mixed into the crowd. The strongest and most independent personalities no doubt. They felt angrier than those around them, likely using that anger to keep them driven and moving. Claiming an empty seat you began to wonder what kind of hell you’d entered, and if you’d been put here to be broken like those around you.

 

****

 

The first thing that happened before training was that you had any and all personal belongings and clothing confiscated and placed in storage. Your holo-communicator, lightsaber, and even the clothes you wore were all taken away. You tried to object, Ren had told you to keep holo-communicator and lightsaber on you at all times, but that didn’t seem to matter to the squadron leader who took them and locked them up all the same. You were assigned a new set of clothes, one that matched the black uniforms that everyone else wore. RK-9059 was now your assigned serial code.

It was very dehumanizing to be called only by a set of letters and numbers, but hopefully it wouldn’t be forever, would it? There was no way to know for sure. You knew the higher ranking members of the First Order were called by their names, like Kylo Ren and Hux were, but you weren’t sure if you’d be granted the same luxury.

Training that day started out very dully, it was more waiting than anything else. There were quite a few formality and accountability proceedings to get through before training started that day, and several hours had passed before you were finally doing something.

Jogging was the first physical activity of the day. Together you and the large group of trainees were led by your stormtrooper handlers to a large circular room that seemed to be encircle the peak of one of the mountains. The circumference of the track was easily a few kilometers, and together you began to jog with those around you on the path that seemed to endlessly bend to the left.

The training regimen that they put you on was rigorous from the get go, but you welcomed it, glad to have something to occupy your mind. Exercise thankfully released a healthy amount of endorphins, helping to keep your stress level down.

The troopers kept your group running until everyone around you was sweating profusely. The smell of over one hundred sweaty bodies clustered around you adding a lovely aroma to the air.

After running came push-ups, sit ups, squats, weight lifting, and at the very end was sparring. Once it was time to spar though most everyone looked like they were about ready to tap out anyways. At the very least this seemed like it would be easier than what you and Ren had been doing to spar before.

The troopers walked through the group, lazily pairing people off by putting them with those who were directly next to them. Unfortunately this left you very unfairly paired with a man who was twice your size and very heavily muscled. Your insides curled up a little knowing that just one solid hit from him would be devastating if he put any kind of power behind it.

Foregoing granting any of you protective gear the troopers who led the group demonstrated a few defensive and offensive moves to practice, and then allowed the group to have at it. It started out alright, people half-heartedly following directions and practicing the moves, but it quickly devolved into multiple real fights breaking out, and none of the troopers seemed to care.

The man you were paired with didn’t seem to be interested in a real fight, and neither were you. Things started out standoffish at first between you, but it was made clear early on that you weren’t going to be able to effectively practice with the size difference. A few honest attempts had been made by both of you, but the results were often ridiculous and typically ended with you losing your balance and falling. So for the most part you both just went through the motions, laughing here and there as you started to goof off more than practice. No one was paying attention or giving a damn to what the group was doing anyways, so it felt safe enough.

 

_**CRACK** _

 

The ground shook beneath you in unison with multiple loud cracks that made it sound like the mountains themselves were being split apart beneath you. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing, and seconds later the lights went out, plunging you into darkness.

Red emergency lights and alarms came on as the cracking explosions from somewhere beneath you continued to get louder. The panicked emotions from all those around you were nearly paralyzing when coupled with your own anxiety. Confusion was thick in the air, but before anyone could react the floor lurched under your feet, sending you and everyone around you to the ground.

There was no time to react, not that anything could have been done anyways. These were some of the worst moments of your life so far. Your Force guided reflexes let you know exactly what was going to happen moments before it did, but there was no way to prevent or evade any of it.

With one final loud crack the entire room plunged downwards at a sixty degree angle, sending the large group of people that you were mixed up in sprawling and sliding down the floor towards the wall. The screeching sound of multiple bodies sliding across the metal floor as hands grasped at nothing mixed with screaming created a morbid soundtrack to accompany the situation.

There were several loud crunches from the first of those who impacted against the wall suddenly turned floor, and for the first time you felt the sickening void that the death of a living being caused in the Force. The horror of knowing, of feeling, the life leave them was enough to send you into shock.

Those who impacted first didn’t die completely in vain, their bodies cushioned the impact for those who came after them, meaning that two thirds of you were still alive from the feel of it. You found yourself buried somewhere in the middle of the pile, or at least if seemed like the middle to you. You couldn’t see anything though, so you could have been near the top or the bottom for all you knew. There were people piled up underneath and on top of you, and you felt like you were being crushed. Any type of movement was futile, your limbs were too tangled with everyone else’s, and pinned under the weight of multiple other people.

It was then when you were completely helpless that the facility finally gave way entirely, plummeting as it slid down the mountainous formations beneath it. Everything was pitch black as you fell, making it all the more terrifying.

After a few horrifying moments of free fall the metal walls were dashed open on the rocks below, spilling you and your fellow trainees down the mountain. You only remembered the first impact onto the rocks, but after you were out of the range set by your security device it activated. Momentarily you felt shooting pain throughout your muscles, and then everything went black. 


	9. Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy fucking shit nuts so much positive feedback!! D:   
> Thank you all so much oh my goodness <3  
> Hope you all continue to enjoy the story! B)

The ground was cold and hard underneath you, and you yourself were freezing. For a moment you wondered if you’d fallen out of bed and onto the cold metal floor. This didn’t feel metallic though, it was rougher more jagged, but it still sapped the heat from you none the less. Knowing that you had to get up or risk hypothermia you started to roll over to get into a better position to stand, but as soon as you moved to roll you found that there was nothing but empty space. Snapping your eyes open at the lurching sensation of almost falling you quickly reversed your momentum and clung to the solid ground.

With your eyes open you now saw, and remembered, the situation you had found yourself in. Below you stretched hundreds if not thousands of feet of sheer rock. A few of your luckier fellows had landed on the higher up ledges as you had, but most had not been so lucky. Far below you a massive pile of bodies lay scattered about the valley below, blood seeping from it like a grotesque crimson river. Diverting your gaze you fought the urge to vomit, instead you looking upwards, and finding a sight that was just as terrible.

Large swathes of rock were missing where they were presumably blasted away from the mountain, and the destabilized facility above lay in twisted ruins. Thick black smoke billowed from several places, and faintly you could hear the distant sound of alarms and screaming coming from inside. Staring at the wreckage of the compound you had just been in felt incredibly surreal. Unsure what else to do you moved to try to get up, knowing that you couldn’t just remain on the ledge; already you had begun to shiver uncontrollably. However, as soon as you tried to put weight on your right leg you knew you wouldn’t be going anywhere. Your knee and lower leg screamed in protest when moved, and your right arm didn’t feel much better.

With what you could only assume were a broken leg, arm, and any other unknown number of internal injuries you were stuck. This was bad. All you had for clothing was the black uniform that you had been given that was intended to keep you cool during exercise. In barely above freezing weather it offered no protection from the cold, or the strong gusts of wind that drafted through the mountains. All you could do now was huddle together to keep in what little warmth you had and wait. Either the First Order would rescue the survivors, or you would be left for dead, or presumed dead. Closing your eyes and attempting to meditate to ward off the cold you settled in for what you feared would be your last moments. What made it all the worse, was being able to feel those who had survived around you as they prepared to meet with their own fates.

* * * *

In the last stages of deterioration from the cold, your mind sluggish and confused while your body was too drained to be able to shiver, you heard a faint voice. It was unclear if it was spoken, in your head, or completely hallucinated, since nothing was clear now. You were no longer sure if you were alive, or if you were even you. None the less you heard the voice speak to you, and it said only one phrase. 

“Don’t leave me.”

Even though it felt like it would be so comfortable, so easy, so painless to slip into permanent sleep the something about the voice calling out to you rekindled your motivation to remain. It kept urging you to fight, to hold on, and you did for as long as you could. The cold air did not relent though and it continued to caress your face with icy needles as your consciousness drifted away, no matter how hard you fought for it to remain.

Something firm and strong grasping hold of you jostled you slightly out of your cold induced coma, but you barely even felt it happen. The entirety of your body was numb, and you longed for nothing but sleep. Muffled mechanical sounding voices were saying something around you, but you couldn’t distinguish their words, or even if they were human.

Hours or maybe minutes past before you were vaguely aware of what was around you. The first thing you were aware of was an already familiar presence of anger, meaning Ren was somewhere nearby. You weren’t sure if you found that comforting or not. What was comforting was the feeling of soft fabric underneath you, and the warmth of the air. The warmth wasn’t a comfort for long though, because soon it started to feel like fire. Even though you’d kept as much of your skin as you could from being exposed the areas that had been in the most contact with the air felt like they may have been frostbitten. All across your body it felt like millions of needles were being jabbed into you as your previously numbed flesh began to regain sensation. 

As the pain worsened it brought you quickly out of unconsciousness. Opening your eyes you found yourself in a small nondescript room that looked like nothing but a small sleeping chamber. Sitting up you threw off the blanket that was on top of you, desperate too cool down your burning skin. With the blanket gone and your eyes finally open you could now fully gage the damage that had been done. The black training uniform was still on you, and any exposed skin that you saw was tinted bright red, and most definitely were frostbitten as you had feared. Flexing your hand you found that it was incredibly stiff and felt partially swollen.

Groaning from the pain you gingerly laid back down, careful of your still aching arm. With your options limited you decided you may as well meditate, hoping that in doing so you might be able to bolster your healing. Unfortunately with each passing moment you regained more sensation to your limbs and body, and with it more pain. It felt like all your veins had opened up and were pouring fire into the tissue around them, the pressure of it straining against your skin. It was strange but somehow you found that you would have rather been in the cold right now.

Minute after minute crawled by in slow agony. Occasionally you could faintly hear the sound people talking somewhere outside your room but you could never clearly make out what they were saying. Noises from the ship you were on were graciously more informational to you than the indistinct sounds of speech. From the sound and feel of it the ship it was ascending into the upper atmosphere, and likely out into space. 

To you it seemed to take forever for the ship to finally land, the combination of your discomfort and lingering confusion from what had just happened making you more impatient than usual. Once landed you heard more people boarding onto the ship. A med crew of two arrived in your room, pushing a hover-stretcher along beside them. Positioning the hover-stretcher flush against your bed they transferred you onto it, and began escorting you off of the ship. 

“What happened?” You asked, trying to sit up so you could get a better look at your surroundings.

“Lay back.” One of the aids instructed you, gently putting pressure on the shoulder of your good arm.

You complied, having seen enough to know you were back on the original star cruiser you had departed from less than twelve hours prior. The aide, apparently content that you weren’t going to move again, continued. “There has been an attack on the base on Yuuritt, you’ve been brought back to the Finalizer to recouperate from the injuries you sustained during that attack.” He explained, walking and guiding the hover-stretcher through the corridors. The overhead lights flashed rhythmically above you, marking your progress as you moved further into the ship.

“How is your pain?” The other aid asked you.

“Bad.” You grumbled, feeling like that should have been obvious from the angry red tone of your skin.

“This should help with that.” The aid replied, readying a syringe.

Part of you wanted to object, the other part just wanted the pain to stop. In the end you didn’t resist, allowing the medical aid to jab the needle into your upper arm. Warmth spread from the point of injection, and within a few minutes you felt practically giddy from the lack of any pain or sensation.

For the rest of your trip to the medical treatment bay you laid back, staring upwards at the now somehow much more beautiful lights above you. In your drugged perception of the world everything seemed somehow much better than it had been before. Even the stormtroopers that passed by you seemed to look happy, and you grinned like an idiot at each of them as they walked past.

Upon reaching the med bay you were transferred to another bed, and the drugs you had been injected with earlier continued to take further effect. A heavy haze settled over you, making your limbs feel weighted and smothering your mind like a thick blanket. Perception of the world around you grew so slight you didn’t even feel when they removed your clothes, and past that you only remembered glimpses of the following hours.

A doctor assisted by droids was observing the damages done to your right leg, a large amount of bruising now evident with your clothing removed… The doctor was closer to your face now, looking at your arm, there’s a twinge of pain when he moves your wrist…The doctor walks towards you with a medical mask, a long hose trailing behind it… Water surrounds you, you don’t remember how you got here; the mask is over your face so that you can breathe; somewhere close by, there’s a presence…

Over the next few hours, being underwater was all you were aware of. Consciousness returned to you just enough that you slowly pieced together that you had been placed in a med-tank to heal. The temperature controlled and medicine enriched water felt fantastic against your skin, and your leg and arm felt like they were mending as well. You weren’t sure how often you felt your master’s presence close by, but it was often enough that you were sure he was there.

After what seemed like a mercifully short amount of time you found yourself being removed from the med-tank and fitted with a med-gown. Breathing felt more difficult than usual, but the doctor explained that it was just the after effects of being in the tank. Previously the mask in the tank had been forcing air into your lungs using positive pressure, and now you were readjusting to having to breathe normally on your own power again. Due to the difficulty breathing, and the still mending bones you were informed you would be held for another twenty-four hours before you were released.

“Wait,” you called just before the doctor left the room. “how long has it been since I got here?”

With a glance down at the holo-reader that held your charts in his hand the doctor responded, “About 70 hours. Just a bit more and you’ll be back in prime condition.” With a smile and a nod he then left the room, leaving you alone. Glancing around you saw that a holo-reader had at least been placed on the table beside your bed.

Upon closer inspection you realized that the holo-reader was actually the one that Ren had given you. Picking it up you glanced at the daily update boards first, finding immediately what you hoped you would. There were several articles that were recently updated concerning the attack on Yuuritt which had apparently been carried out by the Resistance. Somehow a group of Resistance fighters had placed explosive charges along weak points in the mountain, blasting away key points that held support beams for the facilities. There was quite a lot of hateful language directed towards the Resistance contained in the articles, but you skimmed over it since it didn’t actually hold any pertinent information. What concerned you most was that from the sounds of it they were unsure how the Resistance had accomplished this feat, and whomever had done it had not been apprehended. There was a lot of debate about treason though, apparently this would not have been the first time someone turned traitor on the First Order. 

A few short lines at the end of one of the updates caused you to furrow your brow. It stated that there had been 628 deaths, and that there had been no survivors. That couldn’t have been right… you were here, weren’t you? Had there been no rescue attempt made for those who had also been injured? It didn’t make any sense, either the First Order would have had rescued the survivors, or they wouldn’t have. Why did it seem like you were the only one to be rescued? If they could have put in the effort to get you it wouldn’t have taken that much more to pick up a few more people. Were all those men you had been with left to die while you alone got plucked off the cliff and taken to safety?

Just as you were pondering the fate of your peers you felt a signature anger approaching, the fury that it radiated seemed more potent than ever. Setting the holo-reader down you didn’t have to wait long before Kylo Ren’s long strides carried him into the room. Once inside his anger seemed muted, like he had put it on hold for a moment so he could speak to you. At least it meant that his anger likely wasn’t directed at you, which was a relief, but anger could always end up misdirected at any time.

“How are you feeling?” He asked in a more business like than friendly tone, voice distorted by the mask that he always kept firmly in place anywhere outside of his personal quarters. 

“Alright.” You replied with a shrug. “The doctor said I would be discharged in twenty four hours once my bones finish mending.”

Ren walked around to your right side so that he could observe your mending limbs for himself. Raising his hand he hovered it over your arm first, then your leg. As he passed it over your right side you felt the Force flowing strongly from it, quickening along the final stages of the healing process. In less than a few minutes your arm and leg felt completely restored. Breathing was still slightly more difficult than usual, but it was becoming easier with each breath that you took.

“You’ll be released in the next few minutes.” Ren stated once he was finished with his work. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

“Master?” You called to him before he had left the room, and you felt a small swell of contentment come from him at being addressed as such. Especially since it was the first time you’d done it. He paused, turning to see what it was that you wanted.

“Were you the one who made sure I was rescued?” You asked, already almost certain of the answer.

There was a pause, then “Yes.”

“Thank you.” You told him with a smile, but he had no further reply. He turned and swept out of the room, but for just one moment you’d felt that he was pleased, as you were, that you were alive.

In less than a minute the doctor appeared again, gave you a range of motion test on your right arm and leg, and declared that you were fit to be released. An aide came in a little while after the doctor had left, brining your clothes with him. Getting dressed you were glad to be wearing the thicker more protective clothing once more, especially your warm black cloak. With everything in place, and your holo-reader tucked safely in your cloak, you set out, glad to leave the medical ward so early.

As he had said he would be Ren was waiting outside and began to walk as soon as he saw you, apparently in more of a hurry than usual.

“Where are we going?” You asked curiously.

“We’re departing immediately for the outer rim.” He replied, anger rising within him. Now you knew at least one key source from the heightened sense of agitation you got from him. 

You had a million questions, but you didn’t ask any of them, not wanting to push a subject that you could feel made Ren angry. 

Perhaps sensing your own confusion and reluctance Ren continued, “There is a great disturbance in the force surrounding these events. The Supreme Leader wants no more delay in investigation.” 

A nod was the only response you managed as you gasped for air behind Ren as he strode back towards the hanger. Thankfully it was a short trip, since you felt light headed by the time you were approaching the ship that was going to carry you to the outer rim. Climbing aboard behind your master you noted the plain but comfortably spacious interior. It was a ship that was designed for longer interstellar flights with a crew of around four to six people. From the looks of it though it was just going to be you and Ren, and an astro droid that was gliding along the floor, beeping and whirring at its new companions.

“R6, finish any pre-flight checks and get the ship ready for take off.” Ren commanded the droid as he swept past it, heading towards the cockpit. The droid beeped in compliance, setting off to get the ship ready.

Following after Ren you found a standard control room, two chairs, one for a pilot and the other for their co-pilot. Ren sat in the captains chair on the left, and you took the chair beside him on his right. Even thought in reality it hadn’t been that long, it seemed like it had been ages since you’d sat in a similar position, just after your ship had first been captured by the First Order. Looking out at the sight of stormtroopers heading back and forth across the hanger you would have never guessed that would have found yourself here so soon after all that had happened.

With all the preliminary checks completed the engines hummed to life, gently lifting the ship into the air. Taking manual control Ren eased the ship out of the hanger and within a few moments it was just the two of you and the ship, alone in the void of space.


	10. Investigation P. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boo, I'm not dead. Hope you enjoy the chapter and the beginning of the exploration into the outer rim!

Once your ship was carefully guided out of the First Order’s fleet by Ren and put into light speed the emotional atmosphere noticeably lightened. It wasn’t too surprising that Ren seemed calmer away from the star destroyer and everyone on it. From how it felt most of his stress came from interacting with people like Hux and Snoke. Now that he was away from them you hoped he would be less harsh. The fact that there wasn’t nearly enough room to have a lightsaber sparring match was relieving as well. Although you currently didn’t have your lightsaber anyways, which was a conversation you really didn’t want to have with Ren.

Thankfully you were spared from having to bring up the topic. Once the ship was on its course with its sophisticated navigational computer counting down the one hundred and fifty hours until you reached the first planet, Ren turned to you with his hand outstretched, presenting you once again with your lightsaber.

“Thank you so much.” you muttered sheepishly, accepting the weapon from him.

“Don’t lose it again.” Ren responded firmly, voice made even more menacing by his mask which remained on his face.

Nodding you muttered your apologies and happily dropped the subject, glad that the saber was once again back in your possession and securely clipped to your belt.

“Come with me.” Ren ordered, standing up and walking to largest room on the ship. Despite being the largest on the ship the room still  wasn’t that big. It was more of a hallway that doubled as the common room and eating area judging by the long table set into the wall.

Walking to the other side of the room Ren grabbed a spherical droid off of one of the shelves and carried it over to where you stood.

“You will use this to train your reflexes.” He said, pressing a button on the droid and activating it. It hovered out of his hand and hung in the air, fixating on your head and dodging back and forth out of your range of vision.

“Am I supposed to know what to do with this?” You asked after a few moments of the droid hovering and dodging around your head.

“Use your lightsaber to deflect any shots that it fires.” Ren responded, and as soon as he’d mentioned it the droid let out several beeps. The noise that it made drew your attention to it, but before you could respond a shot fired from the droid’s right side, hitting you in the shoulder. Letting out an involuntary yelp you flinched back, making a more hasty effort to unclip your lightsaber and defend yourself.

“Any damage you sustain should be minor and easily healed using the Force. After you’ve finished training you can meditate and heal your injuries.”

“How will I know when I’m finished?” you asked as you held your saber between you and the spherical training droid.

“I will tell you when you’re finished.” Ren responded flatly, striding off towards one of the private side rooms, shutting himself inside.

Another shot fired from the spherical droid, catching you in the arm again. Cursing you used your pain to focus yourself on the droid, pushing aside your growing worries about what was already turning out to be an unpleasant trip. There was no time to worry about the future now, you needed to remain in the present if you wanted to avoid getting shot anymore. It felt like the bolts that were fired from the droid were on a low setting and only strong enough to cause first degree burns. Which, while not serious or life threatening, were damn painful.

While you were still trying to focus on training R6 rolled past, whirring and chirping at you in the astro-droid’s strangely enduring language.

 **{//** _master like you me think_ **//}**

The strange statement caused you to pause and incline your head at the droid. “How so?” you asked, wondering if you had heard it wrong.

 **{//** _human still has all limbs intact_ **//}**

The droid chirped with laughter at its own slightly twisted joke as it proceeded towards the engine room, obviously pleased with itself.

“Very comforting.” You replied sarcastically, watching as R6 as it disappeared behind a closing door. A series of beeps from behind you drew your attention just in time for you to spin around and block the shot that had been heading for your left side. Shaking away any distracting thoughts you again focused your efforts on blocking the shots that began to come from the droid with increasing frequency.

 

****

 

“Turn on the tempature and life force reading monitors and keep your eyes peeled.” Ren commanded you, to which you complied.

“Alright, all monitors have been calibrated and are fully functional.” You told him.

“I’m going to ease the ship down so we can do a low pass over the planet. If the Force is with us we’ll be able to spot what’s caused this disturbance without getting off the ship.”

“Getting off the ship wouldn’t be that bad.”

Ren, who thankfully had his helmet off, shot you a look but you shrugged in response. This was the most conversation you’d had in days, and despite the potential danger an opportunity to get off of this ship sounded fantastic. Being cooped up with an astro-droid with a dark sense of humor and a training droid which had a tendency to turn itself back on after being deactivated had not been fun. Many of burns it had given you had been healed, but a few still remained. Making ordinary movement ever so slightly painful and irritating.

Thanks to the training though your reflexes had gotten much better, but the lack of variety in your routine meant you had grown incredibly restless as well. Ren had only ever showed his face to tell you when it was time to end or begin training, and other than that had kept completely to himself. You had no way of knowing what he was doing while he was in the privacy of his own room, nor was it your place to ask, so it remained a mystery.

“Readout is showing a lot of life forms down there.” You announced, looking at the monitor. The planet was heavily vegetated, and from the little data that was on file there was supposed to be many fauna along with the flora. As the ship continued to circled lower, below the cloud cover you could see that there were a lot of green trees and other foliage, but you didn’t readily see any other life forms.

“Did we have any final data transmissions from this planet?” You asked, already browsing through the computers audio files. The planet you were currently observing had only been given a number in the data banks, 224-687.

“No.” Ren responded. “We only have reports that a small outpost here stopped transmitting.”

Frowning you looked back down below. The fact that the outpost had stopped transmitting could have meant anything, there was no way of knowing if it was even related to the pattern or not.

“I guess we’ll find out.” You muttered as the ship continued its low pass over the planet, cruising just over the tree line. Sitting back you continued to observe the monitors, but you also took the time to enjoy the view, part of you hoping that you would end up landing on the planet. From what you’d read it had barely been explored, and it was currently reading out at a very comfortable temperature. Down below looked like nothing but a comfortable vacation planet to you. 

 

****

 

The outpost stood outside the now stationary ship. It pleased you that Ren was such a competent pilot, especially now. The outpost was tucked inside of a canyon, and the landing area was clearly intended for a much smaller ship than the one that you were currently in. However, Ren had been able to smoothly guide the ship down through the canyon, the wingtips lightly scraping the very narrow rock walls every now and then as a testament to how dangerous the maneuver was. Worry had never gripped you though, there was a steady sureness to the way that Ren controlled the movement of the ship that made it easy to forget just how dangerous it was to do what he was doing.

“Wait here.” He instructed you, once the ship was securely on the ground and adorning his mask he rose and swept off the ship to investigate the abandoned looking building. Sitting and waiting for him made you anxious, there was no way to tell what it was, but something felt very wrong about this place. You thought you knew what Ren had meant when he had mentioned there being a “disturbance in the Force” in relation to these anomalies in the outer rim.

Minute after minute passed as you waited for Ren to return, but eventually he came back, concern and worry once again mixed in with growing anger.

“Did you find anything?” You asked, curious if there was a reason for his growing worry.

“Yes and no.” Ren responded, sounding frustrated. He reached up and grabbed his helmet off his head, heavily setting it down on the control board. “Its nothing but an abandoned outpost, but it looks like there may have been an attack here. Meaning we’ll need to investigate to see if we can determine what caused it before moving on.”

From the sound of his voice Ren deeply resented having to do any of this, but the fear that he held for Snoke kept him on assignment, no matter how much he loathed it.

“Is it safe to get off then?” You asked, pleased that this meant you’d get a chance to get off the ship and stretch your legs. However, the looming threat that you may run into the whatever was causing these multiple disturbances hung in the back of your mind like a dark shadow.

“No, but we need to get off and investigate anyways.” Ren replied, turning to leave the ship and motioning for you to follow.

“R6 look after the ship while we’re gone.” Ren commanded his astro-droid who chirped affirmatively at him while you passed by, exiting the ship for the first time in over one hundred hours.

Overhead the planet's sun beamed brightly down onto the planet, though most of the canyon you were in remained in the cool shadows. You would have preferred to take a moment to admire the large complex rock formations that soared over your head, but you had to keep moving since Ren did not share your sentiment of admiration for your surroundings. 

Once inside the outpost you saw that it did indeed look like it had been attacked. Doors were ripped off of their frames, or dented and forced inwards. Metal panels had been torn away from the wall exposing the inner tech which looked like it had been picked apart as well. There were not any signs of inhabitation by humans, or any other species, but the same strange feeling hung in the air. It felt like the force was swirling and crashing together strangely, as if it had been stirred about and agitated by a giantic hand. 

“There are supposed to be a lot of predatory species here.” You stated, bringing out your data pad and running through the short list of wildlife known to inhabit the planet. “But this doesn’t seem to fit the attack pattern of any of them.” Furrowing your brow you glanced around the room. It looked like it had been carefully plucked apart, not by human hands, but by something that held intelligence. Trails in the dust showed that several creatures had visited, but the tracks all looked small and fresh. From the layers of dust it looked like it had been several weeks since the initial attack had happened.

"Do you have any idea what could have done this?” You asked Ren as you continued to tour through the abandoned and ravaged outpost. Room after room was plucked apart and dusty, pattern of destruction continuing through each room that you visited.

“No,” Ren said in response to your question, “whatever did it though, it didn’t leave any bodies."

“Do you think the residents left of their own accord then?” you suggested, “Maybe they raided anything of use to them and left.”

“Possibly,” Ren said, “but the things that are missing aren't that valuable.”

“So then why would they dismantle the place like this?” You asked, looking around again at some of the worst damage as you circled back through the building to go outside. It wasn't anything that would have been easy to do so there must have been some purpose behind it.

“I’m not sure.” He muttered, walking back in the direction of the ship.

Groaning to yourself and hanging your head you internally began to calculate how long it would take to get to the next planet. A strange pattern etched along the floor caused you to pause from your calculations. It was an atypical pattern scratched into the metal flooring, as though something heavy had been dragged along it. The fact that the scratches were covered in as much dust as everything around it meant that it had occurred sometime during or shortly after the attack.

“Hold on,” you said to Ren, motioning him over to look at the scratches in the floor. Tracing the pattern it seemed like it led outside, into the rock canyon.

“It could be a clue, should we check it out?” you asked.

He stood staring at the marks in the floor for an uncomfortable amount of time, and you could feel him fighting his own internal struggle because even though he felt this was pointless and wouldn’t lead anywhere, he also had his orders. Whether he liked it or not, he needed to be as thorough as possible.

“I suppose we must.” Ren sighed, resigned to his fate. Both of you stood, making to follow the marks which led along the dusty metal floor and out into the world beyond. As you had hoped, the marks continued on the rocky ground outside, leading you past the ships that were stationed out back and further into the canyon. Any sounds that were made by either of you echoing and intensifying along the walls.

The marks continued along the canyon for what felt like miles, but the walk was made much more pleasant by the enchanting scenery that went with it. Layer upon layer of twisting and flowing rock formations stretched hundreds of feet over your head, telling the story of the nearly incompressible amounts of time that it had taken to form it. Ren finally seemed to begin to appreciate the scenery as well, since his resentment had dwindled the farther you had walked along. Perhaps he’d just needed some time outside and not known it.

Eventually the going got a bit more difficult. The end of the canyon was approaching, and the rock faces that surrounded you became shorter, but closer together, and the ground became more unpredictable as well. The climb out turned out to be well worth it though.

The end of the canyon overlooked a large bowl shaped valley, which looked like it was probably created by a meteor a very long time ago. Currently the valley was filled with a thick cover of trees, at the very center of which seemed to be a clearing and a small lake.

Overhead the sun was dipping low over the rocks that lined the horizon on the other side of the valley, bathing everything around you in a deep orange light. Both you and Ren paused for just a moment, enjoying the rare sight, it was so serene that it was impossible for either or you to resist the urge to indulge your sight for just a little while. 

Without needing to speak you both sat down to rest next to each other, staring out over the valley. There was no reason why you couldn't take a short break before heading further into the valley, following the strange scraping marks that still marred the ground here and there.

 

****

 

“We should go back.” Ren said, as you stood at the edge of the forrest in the valley. His attention was fixed skyward, at the ever darkening horizon.

“Just listen, though.” You told him.

“To what?” He asked after a few moments of silence had passed.

“Exactly.” You responded, “According the data the forrest should be teeming with noise at this time, but instead its dead quiet.”

The silence that emanated from the forrest truly was unnerving, and the disturbance you felt was stronger than ever here. Curiosity welled up inside you and drew you to the forrest, just as your fear repelled you from it. Ren was hesitant as well, but either not wanting to seem fearful, or dutifully obeying orders, he made his way into the trees without another word.

Once inside the silence was only more pressing. Now the surrounding trees blocked out even the sound of the wind, the only sounds that filled the air now were the wind lightly stirring the branches overhead, and the crunch of your boots as you walked through the undergrowth. Darkness was beginning to press around you as well as night swept over the sky like a thick blanket. However, just as you were wondering what you could use to light your way through the ever darkening forrest something almost unbelievable happened. All around you hundreds upon thousands of veins of blue and green lights illuminated among the trees. The dim light that they emitted was just enough that the whole forrest was once again visible, cast in a dim bluish hue. It was truly an amazing sight to behold, and it took you a few moments, but finally the word for this phenomenon that you had only read about came to your mind. Bioluminescence.

The external veins of light shining forth from the trees rippled with color, changing hue and producing complex patterns of light. Initially you'd thought the light had come from the trees themselves but upon closer inspection the veins of lights where not connected at all, in fact they didn't even seem to be part of the tree.. Instead they were made up of thousands of tiny specks clustered closely together, each only the size of a small seed. Peering closely at them you could see they were each small individual creatures, shuffling and moving over and around each other as they pulsed with light.

Noticing you inspecting the trunks of the trees Ren did so as well himself. “That’s odd.” He said, eyebrows coming together as he frowned at what he saw. “There’s no record of any bioluminescent lifeforms on this planet.”

Just before you reached out and touched one you paused, wondering if they might be poisonous. Perhaps this invasive species, or whatever it was, was connected to the disappearances? But then what had caused the scraping pattern? Staring at the tiny points of light only raised more questions, especially since you couldn't determine what kind of life form they were.

“Do you think they’re dangerous?” You asked, but before Ren could reply as gust of wind blasted through the trees. It was strong enough that it swept many of the small dots of light off of the trees and into the air. Raising his hand Ren cast a shield around himself using the Force, but you unfortunately did not have the power or skill to do so yourself. Instead you wound up with specks of light scattered all over you. You could see them on your clothes, and feel them on your skin and in your hair.

Initially you jumped, since you weren’t sure what would happen when the creatures contacted your skin, but when you didn’t feel any burning or any other sensation that would indicate poison or corrosive chemicals you allowed yourself to calm somewhat.

Turning you saw that Ren was staring at you, looking much more worried than you felt. Shrugging at him you said, “Well I guess we wait and see if I die or not.” Trying to inject a bit of sarcastic humor into the tense situation.

Frowning unappreciatively at your joke Ren walked over to help you brush the small creatures off which turned out to be much harder than it seemed. The ones on your hands and other exposed skin had fallen off already, but the ones that had fallen on your clothes and your hair had tangled their tiny appendages around whatever they could grasp and refused to let go. They each had to individually be grabbed and pulled off, in a painstakingly slow process.

After several minutes, and quite a bit of help from Ren, you were finally able to get all of the creatures removed. You were actually incredibly grateful at how helpful Ren had been in getting out any of the creatures that you couldn’t see in your hair. If it weren’t for him they probably would have still been stuck in there.

“What are these things?” You asked, staring at a few that you had held onto in your hand. In cleaning yourself off they had been the ones that had caught your attention the most, displaying more vibrant and individual colors than the others. There were three of them, one a red color, one green, and one blue. Even though you had them in your hand held up to your face they were still so small that you could barely make out any features. On one end they had a tangle of several leg or tentacle like appendages, and on the other end they seemed to have several dark spots which may have been eyes.

"I don’t know.” Ren muttered, staring at them himself. “Bring them with as evidence to study if you want but you’re responsible for them. Right now we need to get back to the ship.”

Nodding you followed after him as he began the return journey back to the outpost and your ship. Cupping the small creatures in your hand you gently shook them into one of your pockets. They latched onto the fabric once inside and you were certain they wouldn’t be going anywhere until you were forced to try to remove them.


	11. Contact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Red], [Green], and [Blue] can be named whatever the reader would like (I personally would name them Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle but that's just me)  
> That also marks the 3rd Pokemon reference I've subtly made in this fic thus far, the other two are number based and if you find and understand them I will love you 5ever.
> 
> Hope you all continue to enjoy, and thank you again for the continued positive feedback! It always makes my day/week to read the comments that you guys leave me. :D

A small glass container now housed the small luminescent creatures you’d kept from the night before. They sat huddled next to each other on a large rock surrounded by water, which was the closest replication you could make to their natural environment with the resources you had access to.

Frowning down at them you wondered if you’d find them still sitting there in the morning, or if they’d shrivel up and die overnight. After all you had no way of knowing how to properly take care of them since they were an undocumented species and you weren’t a trained expert in anything like this. Despite that you gave it your best try and provided them with water, a bit of protein, and plant matter from the food banks on the ship.

As you dimmed the lights in your room and prepared to sleep you watched as the three small creatures, which you’d named [ _Red_ ], [ _Green_ ], and [ _Blue_ ], blinked out random sequences of color and light. You had no way of knowing if it was random or if there was meaning behind it, but somehow, you got a sense of intelligence off of the creatures. Maybe they were trying to communicate with you, or themselves right now, that usually was at least one of the functions of bioluminescence in the creatures that had such abilities. Even if it was communication though you currently had no way of understanding it, so it didn’t matter much anyways.

Brushing away worries about how intelligent or communicative such a small creature could be you allowed yourself to mindlessly watch them as you drifted to sleep. There would always be morning when you could check on them again.

 

****

 

The sun was beaming through the windows on the ship in less than six hours. Blinking in the bright light of dawn you drew your head up to peer at the creatures in the container next to your bed, and after staring for a few moments you realized with a jolt of panic that they weren’t there.

Now that you felt much more awake, you jumped out of bed and quickly turned on the lights, keeping your eyes on the container the whole time. 

As the lights blinked on you saw what looked like parts of the rock change color more slowly than the ground surrounding it. Flicking the light on and off a few more times you continued to witness the same phenomena, like part of the ground lagged behind the changing of the light.

Moving over towards the container you slowly lifted the lid and stuck your hand inside, gently feeling around the strange spots. At first you felt only the rough rock until something soft and fleshy brushed against your fingertip in sharp contrast to the texture of the stone. They were still there after all.

Feeling around you found the other two, and once satisfied that you’d found them you let out a sigh, retrieving your hand from the container and shutting the lid. Right after the lid snapped closed the three creatures shed their camouflage and revealed their luminescence once again for a few moments. [ _Red_ ], [ _Green_ ], and [ _Blue_ ] blinked their respective colors at you, and strangely enough you thought that you could feel they were happy about something. Regardless of what you thought you could feel, you could definitely see that they were at least three times larger than they had been the night before. If that growth trend continued it would definitely be a problem. However, their increased size did give you a better opportunity to observe their anatomy.

Multiple tentacles sprouted from one end of the creature, clinging to the rock below them. The tentacled limbs kept the head and the eyes held upright, which they used to peer at you from their camouflaged position. Crouching down you stared back at the alien life forms, noticing now that the eyes were faintly visible even when the creatures wore their disguise. However, you weren’t certain you could have spied them unless you knew what you were looking for.

Sighing you made note of all the observations you’d made on the creatures in your data pad, and then left your room to go get breakfast for the creatures, yourself, and Ren, who likely wouldn’t be up for another hour.

 

****

 

The trees of the forest rushed by you at a nearly blinding pace, if you hadn’t been following Ren you weren’t sure if you could have navigated the forest at this terrifyingly fast pace. However, in front of you Ren gave off a feeling of boredom, as though this was going too slowly for him. He’d felt like that a lot lately though, desperately desiring this useless endeavor to be over.

Ignoring him as best you could, you continued to focus on piloting your hover bike, and admiring the ancient towering trees around you which was a sight you had seldom been treated to. Branches fanned out overhead, filtering the light into soft beams which fell down onto the vegetation below.

As it had been the night before, the forest was incredibly quiet. It had been more obvious earlier when you’d paused with your bikes as you decided which way to go. Once again where there should have been hundreds of thousands of lifeforms waking up and making noise in the large tangle of green, there was barely anything. Perhaps you heard the sound of something moving around every now and then, but it could have just been the wind stirring through the trees as well.

 

It wasn’t until several hours later that you both finally stopped, the hover bikes whirring as their engines powered down. Dismounting your bike you felt your boots sink into the soft grass which the fields around you were lush with. Wind swept through, making the grass gently ripple like water and glimmer in the soft orange glow of the fading sunset.

“This way.” Ren called to you as he easily scaled a small rock formation that jutted out of the ground. It was the highest ground for thousands of feet, overlooking the small lake in the middle of the crater and the rest of the grass that slowly swayed in the wind. Following behind him you scaled up it as well, using the same foot and hand holds that Ren had used. Upon reaching the top you saw that Ren was already seated on one of the rocks, making himself comfortable apparently.

“We’ll be able to keep a lookout overnight from up here.” He told you, “I’ll take the first four hour watch, you can take the second. Once its morning again we can place some sensors and move onto the next planet.”

Nodding you Un-shouldered your light backpack and fished out your sleeping bag, laying it out on the ground near Ren and preparing for your light rest.

“Which planet are we scheduled to investigate next?” You asked him, laying down and staring up at the galaxy of stars rising above you. The perspective that the outer rim had on the rest of the galaxy was simply breathtaking. Giant clusters of sparkling light, intermingled with shadow sprawled out across the sky in a great band, other dots of lights dustingaround it. Somewhere out there one of those millions of stars held your next destination, and you could only hope it was half as nice as this planet had been.

“Don’t worry about that now.” Ren assured you, “Focus on meditation and trying to rest.”

 

****

 

As you took your watch and sat looking up at the many points of light that illuminated the sky, you had a moment to ponder just how you had wound up here. Here you were, alone, on some poorly documented planet of the outer rim, keeping watch as the commander of the First Order slept.

Come to think of it you never really had seen him sleep before. Gazing down now you saw that he looked so much more incredibly peaceful once asleep. Most people did, but for Ren it was a very noticeable contrast to his usual sullen discontent. Anger tugged at his face so often that he wore a nearly perpetual scowl. Now however, his face was slack, his expression serene, and you found yourself actually admiring his face fore a few moments before turning your attention back to the task at hand.

The tiny specks of light from the night before were slowly drifting on the wind, out of the forest and into the fields of grass around the lake. Ever since you’d taken the second watch and traded places with Ren you’d watched as more and more slowly accumulated in the grass. Multiple times you’d wanted to go down and take a look at them, perhaps gather more data for future use, but Ren had ordered you to stay put and wake him if anything happened. It had been one of the groggiest exchanges you’d ever had with him since both of you had been half asleep, but you distinctly remembered him not wanting you to move from this spot.

It made you feel restless to just sit and watch them, the tiny creatures illuminating everything around them in an ever changing spectrum of color. The soft glow of color from the creatures continued to get brighter as more and more of them filtered in, ever so slowly drifting on the wind out of the forrest and accumulating in ever greater numbers in the field. In the beginning you’d thought that this was possibly something normal they did every night, but as time went on you noticed there was a pattern to their movements. More and more of the specks of light were clustering around the rock formations in the field; they gathered most around the one you rested on, and you weren’t sure if you found it adorable or disturbing.

Staring down at your master who slept peacefully you weighed your options as you debated wether or not you should wake him. He had demanded that you wake him if anything happened, but you weren’t sure that this really qualified as something happening. The brightly colored creatures weren’t hurting anything, and all you wanted a closer look.

Internally you kept reminding yourself to stay put, follow orders, not enrage the psychopath that you were stuck with for at least several more weeks, but something else kept fighting your self-control.

It felt like a bad friend who kept encouraging you to do something you knew would have terrible consequences. You couldn’t even be sure if it came from in you, or from somewhere outside of yourself. It felt similar to when Snoke had projected his thoughts into your mind, but there were no thoughts, only a feeling. A strong sense of restlessness that needled at your muscles and your sanity, willing you to get up and just have a closer look. Nothing bad was going to happen you just needed to see the small creatures more closely, that was all.

Almost as though in a trance you slowly rose from your seated position next to Ren. You’d be right back, the feeling told you, you’d be right back and he’d never even know you’d gotten up. Everything was going to be just fine.

Once you’d slowly crawled back down to the ground you found yourself immersed in light, reds, greens, blues, and all other colors were fading in and out of existence all around you. You would have liked to imagine that all of the small creatures seemed pleased to see you, perhaps even some recognized you from the night before. But it was doubtful that any could have possibly recognized you, they were still smaller than one of your finger tips and there was no way something so small could be that intelligent.

Walking carefully though the sea of lights, you watched them stir up into the air as you passed drifting calmly on the still night air. Blues and greens were the predominating colors in the sea of light,the gentle and calm hues blinking in a lazy pattern from the tiny creatures. As you as you stopped walking and crouched down to get a better look at the small creatures you felt something pull at your mind once again. It was as though every time you stopped moving the feeling of restlessness set in once again, and the more you tried to ignore it the more unbearable it became. Without even knowing why you got up and kept moving, not even paying attention to where your feet carried you anymore. The thoughts moving through your head were slow, and kept getting more and more sluggish. Then, in brief moment of clarity you questioned what was wrong with you and why you were doing this before a pair of strong limbs wrapped around your legs and pulled, sending you crashing into the ground.

Panic flashed across your mind as a pair of tentacles quickly wound their way around your legs and you found yourself being dragged along the ground. Once you were able to look up you realized in horror that you’d been walking towards the water of the lake this entire time, and now something had a hold of you and was pulling you the final few feet to the water. Kicking your legs you tried to shake off the creature's grip, but it was unbelievably strong and it felt like its limbs and been adhered directly to your legs. Rolling over onto your stomach you tried to find somewhere along the ground that your could grasp onto, but your hands grabbed uselessly at the flat ground as you continued your unimpeded trip towards the shore.

Water began to lick around the toes of your boots as the creature eased itself back into the water, taking you with it one inch at a time. This was what you had feared was happening, it was going to drag you under the water with it and allow you to drown. Doubling your efforts you continued to try to kick and struggle your way out of the creatures grasp, but to no avail; it felt like the damn thing had muscles stronger than titanium.

As one final attempt to save your own skin you held up your hand and directed it towards what you assumed was the creatures face, since it was what held the eyeballs that were staring directly at you. In the dimly lit night it was hard to make out any distinguishing features, but all you needed was something to aim for, it didn’t matter too much what it was. With your life hanging in the balance you cleared your mind and summoned your connection to the Force, using it to try to push the creature off of you.

It worked, but definitely not in the way you had intended. The creature paused its progress once it felt the pressure from the Force, it wasn’t nearly enough to push it off, but it had apparently been enough for the creature to at least feel that you had done it. Submerged up to your waist you waited to see how the creature would further react, hoping it would just release you and skulk back into the water.

Instead, the creature rose up out of the water, using its larger hind limbs to support itself and lifted you with it. It held you up by your legs, dangling you upside-down in front of its eyes as water dripped down around you. The thick limbs which held your legs wound more tightly around them, immobilizing them completely which more of its tentacles moved to do to your arms as well. The slimy limbs didn’t stop with immobilization though. They continued to writhe across your anatomy, feeling over every square inch as though inspecting something incredibly foreign. Your breath hitched in your throat once the creature realized that the covers over you were clothes, and that there was more to you underneath them.

Hissing with discomfort you felt something cold and slick slip underneath your shirt , sliding across the expanse of bare skin beneath the fabric.

Even through your efforts weren’t getting you anywhere you continued to struggle against the creature as its advances got more and more intimate. A pain tingling along your skull drew your attention away from the multiple tentacles feeling their way along your body and to the fact that this _creature_ , this **thing** … it was forcing itself into your mind.

Only once before had you had you felt something similar, and it had been when you had met Ren for the second time in the interrogation room back on the Finalizer. Never in your life did you think you’d find yourself wanting to go back to such a place, but right now it seemed favorable to the situation you’d found yourself in. Light points of pressure felt like they were scattered across the top of your head, as though the creature was feeling for a weak spot where it might access your mind so it could violate that too while also violating your body.

Unlike with Ren there was nothing sharp or cutting from the feel of the creature in your mind, instead if felt like nothing more than a pressure, like your mind was being pushed past its physically and mental capacity. Worming tendrils broke through the tension and allowed themselves to casually peruse your mind, flipping through your memories as though looking through a picture book. As the presence in your head continued to browse, each memory that it looked at briefly flashed into your mind. It started with your time on this planet, and then started working further backwards. The time that you’d spent with Ren flashed by next, and you were reminded once again as the creature browsed past the memory that all Ren had wanted you to do was stay put.

The creature didn't pause and allow you any sentiment though, pushing forward and delving deeper into the memories that you held in your head. Next your time on the Finalizer pasted by, the creature lingering on the image of the star-map that was in your mind which detailed the location of the disturbances in the outer rim. It then continued its whirlwind tour of your mind from there, going back to when you lived on Hoth, and then even further back from that. It dredged through every part of your life, bringing up each moment of joy, and pain that existed there. Agony raged from inside you as you were held immobile and forced to relieve the worst moments of your life while the creature took its time and picked through them like interesting lab specimens.

In one last ditch instinctual effort you tried to use your own mental effort to push the creature off of your mind. Thankfully it turned out to be easier than trying to disentangle yourself from its limbs, but you had to concentrate incredibly hard to keep perfect focus, and only then were you were able to slowly start freeing yourself. Just like picking up large heavy strands of rope you gathered up the creatures presence in your mind and slowly began forcing it back outwards, feeling the pressure lift with each passing second as you continued to force it outwards.

The creature felt surprised and alarmed that you were able to exorcise it from your mind and continued its efforts to push its way back in. There was no way you were going to allow it back in without a fight though, so as it pushed to enter your mind you continued to push back against it. The battle between you went on for an indeterminate amount time, each of you refusing to budge an inch. Just as your head was beginning to throb from a combination of great mental effort and being held upside-down for too long a very curious thing happened.

Somehow in pushing against the creature's mind to keep it out of your own you accidentally pushed all the way back into the creature’s own mind. It was as though you'd both been on either side of a door pushing against each other, and then you'd somehow pushed hard enough to throw yourself through the door and onto the other side where the creature resided.

Nothing about the creature’s mind made sense to you, it was so dark, and trying to look at the memories felt like trying to play video on a device that couldn’t properly read it. You could see flashes of light and color, but much more than sight the creature seemed to also depend heavily on tactile input from its multiple limbs. Even now you could feel the memory of the creature running its tentacle across your stomach, and somehow feeling your own skin through the creature's memories made you cringe on several different levels.

“ _ **Let. Me. Go**_.” You finally said through clenched teeth, while trying to simultaneously imprint that thought onto the creature’s mind while you still occupied it. Instead, the tentacles clenched and tightened their grip on you in defiance of what you had tried to will them to do. The pain from them constricting your limbs was just enough to break your concentration, allowing the creature to come flooding back into your own mind.

Nausea was starting to grip you in slowly building waves, the complete overstimulation of the situation was pushing you to your mental and physical limits. Concentration was more difficult now, your head pounding while you fought off the growing desire to vomit. The multiple points all pushing into your mind at once was more than you could resist now, you could try to block out one or two at a time, but it felt like there were now six to eight separate entities all trying to push into your mind all at once.

Hope was starting to slowly fade away for you as you wondered how much longer the creature would delay before finally eating or drowning you. However, that moment never came. The creature just continued to push through your mind, sifting through it as you continued to get glimpses into its own feelings and intentions.

There were brief sensations of vulnerability, and lacking mobility from the creature but you weren’t entirely sure what it meant. It felt like the creature itself felt vulnerable but you had no idea why that would be, then you had a horrible dawning realization. A combination of the creatures thoughts, and the feeling of it inside your mind made you understand what you hadn’t been able to earlier. The feeling of something making you restless, of making you feel like you had to get up and investigate, it didn’t come from inside you, it had come from this creature. Somehow these things had the ability to influence the emotions of the beings around them in order to manipulate the actions that they took.

The most terrifying aspect of the creatures thoughts though, was knowing that it had no intention of letting you go. On the contrary, it wanted to keep you. You couldn’t understand enough of its thoughts to know just why it wanted to keep you, all you knew is that it wanted to very very badly. You were as valuable to the creature as your lightsaber was valuable to you. As your mind started racing with terrified questions about what it was going to do to you, you screamed, trying to summon what you knew was your last hope.

“ **MASTER!** ” You screamed out for Kylo, hoping he would hear you and wake up. No doubt he’d be furious to find you’d disobeyed him, but an enraged Kylo Ren would be incredibly useful at the moment.

A few seconds passed, you didn’t hear anything. From the little you could feel of his emotions you knew he was still asleep. “ **MASTER!!** ” You screamed even louder, but there was still no response. Why did he have to sleep so heavily? You thought hopelessly as you found yourself being dragged along the ground by the creature once again. It was heading towards the forest this time, that was all you knew. Otherwise the creature's emotions were too fast moving and foreign for you to fully understand what it meant to do to you. All you knew is that it was much, much, much stronger than you, but as soon as you could get an arm free and reach your saber you were going to hack this thing into a million pieces.


	12. Retrieval

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, so sorry these are taking so long again! :( Don't worry though, I will keep posting.  
> Glad you guys are still enjoying, hope you enjoy a chapter that's a smidgeon fluffier :3

The creature that had you in its grip slowly started to drag itself, and you with it, away from the water and in the direction of the treeline of the forest. Despite the fact that it hadn’t worked the whole night you still continued to struggled, incapable of passively handing your fate over to your alien captor.

“ _ **REN GODDAMMIT WHY DO YOU HAVE TO SLEEP SO MUCH!?**_ ” You screamed into the night out of frustration, not actually expecting the words to yield any results. However, in a few moments you felt the distant heat of anger that meant Ren was finally awake, and he definitely wasn’t happy.

The creature had dragged you far enough towards the edge of the forest that you could now barely make out top of the rock where Ren was, undoubtedly looking around and observing that he was now alone. A howl of rage echoed across the clearing as Ren immediately ignited his lightsaber, the bright red light shining out like a beacon across the clearing. However, much to your dismay instead of coming to your aid he began taking out his rage on the rocks around him, slashing into them with unbridled fury, sending sparks and bits of molten rock spraying into the air.

_What was he doing? What had those damn rocks ever done to him, and why wasn’t he **helping** you?_

Sticks, small rocks, and other bits of debris were now suddenly being ground against your face, which was much less pleasant than the soft grass that you had been dragged through moments earlier in the field. Flinching away from the ground you turned your face away so that you were less at risk of getting your eyeball impaled on something and yanked out of your skull. That would be just your luck right now.

“ **MASTER _!!_** ” You screamed out one more time before the beacon of red sparks atop the rock outpost faded from your view entirely. The distant crackling whooshes from his lightsaber stopped, or at least you hoped they had since you were now out of range of sight.

Rocking yourself onto your back to further protect your face, although still held tightly in the creature’s grip, you stared up at the forest canopy above you. The broad leaves of the trees filtered out what little light the stars offered and plunged you into darkness, but as with the night before you weren’t left in the dark for long.

The creature that gripped you as it crawled along the ground was first to illuminate, bright rings of blue which changed into yellow shining forth from its skin. Staring down at the tentacles that surrounded you, you now had your first good look at the thing that had abducted you. Thick strong limbs were wrapped around your arms, and completely enveloped your legs. Four of its limbs were dedicated to holding you tightly in their grasp, while the other four worked on dragging the creature along the ground. It was able to keep its own body suspended off of the ground as it walked, its four tentacled limbs holding it slightly upright, but since you were slightly larger than it it was forced to drag rather than carry you.

You didn’t have long to study the creature before hundreds of other blue rings came to light, illuminating the entire forest around you. Nauseating fear gripped your insides as you looked around to realize you were surrounded by other creatures just like the one that was holding you captive. Many of them were smaller, but quite a few were the same size as the creature that had you, and some were even larger. Not to mention there must have been _hundreds_ of them.

Kicking against the creature’s grip you tried for what felt like the millionth time to free yourself, terrified of what these things had in mind to do with you. Right now you were fairly certain you knew what had caused the outpost here to stop transmitting, and you didn’t want to be the next victim of whatever this new alien species was.

Shifting the creature tightened its grip on you as it moved to climb one of the many trees that surrounded you. Blue, yellow, and other multicolored lights blinking from all around you as your face was abraded against the bark of the tree the creature was ascending while dragging you along behind it.

A familiar crackling sound drew your attention and you had less than second to perceive a red lightsaber hurtling through the air before the unstable red beam sliced cleanly through the creatures tentacles and then continued on its rotating arc back to the hands of its owner. With the creature’s grip loosened you fell the short distance to the ground, somehow more fascinated by the fact that Kylo Ren could _throw his lightsaber_ and then _catch it again_ , than concerned for your own safety.

Kylo Ren now stood at the edge of the forest, glaring at the scene before him as anger burst off of him like an explosives factory that had been set ablaze. Never in the short time that you’d known him had you ever felt such potent rage coming off him.

Finally on the ground and free of the creature you fought to get its still grasping tentacles disentangled from your own limbs. Despite the creature’s demise its limbs still maintained some hollow sense of self, driven to keep moving by a desire to keep their grip on you held as firmly as possible.

“ _Get back to the ship. **NOW**._ ” Ren bellowed at you, his voice more terrifying than it ever had been, even without his mask and voice synthesizer.

Scrambling you kicked off the last tentacle that had been clinging to your leg, and shakily got back onto your feet. You hesitated just a moment to try to catch your breath, but apparently that was too much of a delay for Ren, “ **GO!!** ” He shouted at you, pointing back towards the clearing.

Half jogging half running you finally got yourself into gear and started moving again. You weren’t sure what you were more terrified of at the moment, the creatures which were now flashing quick angry patterns of red overhead in the trees, or the rage that came off of Ren which made the combined rage of the creatures seem almost insignificant.

As you skirted around him Ren turned at yelled at you once more, “ _Take my speeder, head straight back to the ship. If you aren’t there when I get back I will hunt you down and drag you there myself. **Do you understand!?**_ ”

You understood perfectly. Nodding quickly you broke into a full sprint, wanting to be away from the entire situation as soon as possible. Just as you were wondering what Ren was going to do you heard the crackle of electricity and turned around to see lighting jumping from his fingertips and arcing into the creatures. The flesh of the creatures hissed and popped as the lightning contacted it, making it look like they were boiling alive in their own skin. They writhed in pain, some of the smaller ones curling up into small blackened chunks and falling out of the trees.

Horrified at everything you had seen, and content that Ren could look after himself you continued your flight, finding Ren’s speeder right on the edge of the clearing. Mounting and starting the bike as quickly as you could you raced away from the clearing and the scene of your near abduction, back towards the ship and hopefully some form of safety.

 

****

 

Inside the ship you now sat paralyzed on the ground. You had made it as far as putting the speeder away in one of the exterior chambers of the ship, then getting yourself inside the ship and shutting the door, but after that shock had finally taken over and you’d found yourself sitting and staring down at the floor.

What had you been doing walking out into that field? You’d known you weren’t supposed to, and you hadn’t even wanted to, but still you had found yourself doing it. It was like you had been watching while someone else took control of your mind and piloted you like a ship. And those tentacles. Even though you’d been free of them for several minutes it still felt like they were all over you, clinging to you, and feeling across your flesh. You needed a shower, badly, to get not only the disgusting crust from the creatures mucous membranes off your skin, but to attempt to erase feel of the shifting and constricting muscles of the tentacles from your skin.

Getting up you made your way to clean yourself off, but before you got far you felt the familiar anger of Ren approaching the ship very quickly. Planning to linger just long enough for Ren to see that you’d obeyed him and come back you waited near the door of the ship.

It wasn’t a very long wait. Within less than a minute of sensing his approach Ren was striding angrily inside his eyes flashing around until they finally rested on you. The weight of his gaze made you cringe backwards, and made you wish you would have gone take that shower before he’d gotten back.

“ _ **Why!?**_ ” Ren spat out, his words constricted as he fought to contain his boundless anger. “ **Why did you run away!?** ”

You’d shrunk back into the wall as far as you could, a familiar and overpowering sense of dread growing in your stomach. Why did you need to deal with this _now_? Hadn’t enough shit things happened to you for one day?

“I didn’t run away, I-“

“ **You were gone when I woke up.** ” Ren bellowed at you, slamming his hands on either side of the wall behind you, effectively trapping you between himself and the wall. “ _ **Why did you leave!?**_ ”

So much anger, so close to you, so loud, and you could still feel yourself being touched all over by that… thing.

“I’m sorry I don’t know.” you muttered, glad that you were at least able to somehow keep your voice steady enough to speak. “I came back so can you please stop yelling?”

From the change in Ren’s posture you realized his anger must have flickered enough for him to finally feel how horribly anxious you still were. Immediately his arms disappeared from your sides and he instead stood an arm's length away, now seemingly unsure what to do. It didn’t help that you were even less sure what you were supposed to do, leaving you both stuck staring at each other.

“Are you alright?” Ren asked finally, his voice sounding rough and almost apologetic.

“I’m fine.” you said as convincingly as you could, which was futile when the person you were talking to could feel exactly how not fine you were. At the same time what was he going to do? He was the most emotionally distant person you’d ever met, and the last person you’d ever turn to for something as tender as comfort. More than once you’d had to get through similar situations alone, you could do again. You always did.

“Can we please just leave this planet?” You asked, trying to shift the focus off of yourself. Leaving would be very nice right now as well.

Being roughly grabbed and pulled tightly to Ren’s chest was not the response you had been expecting, thought it was definitely not unwelcome. His arms wrapped around you as he clung tightly to you, pressing your face into his chest, his chin resting on top of your head.

“I’ll never let those damn things touch you ever again.” He muttered angrily, after holding you for a few moments. It was as close as he got to being comforting you supposed.

Relaxing into his hold and wrapping your arms around him in return you sighed and breathed in the scent of the fabric pressed against your face. Burnt flesh was the most predominant smell that clung to it, with something distinctly fishy about the other part of the smell. It made you laugh a bit to yourself, just thinking about how awful you both smelled while covered in alien slime and guts.

Quite before either of you wanted to move. From how it felt Kylo had gone even longer without human contact than you had, something you hadn’t really considered up until now. Both of you clung to each other, reveling in the simple comfort of human touch and being held.

“I should probably pilot the ship out of here.” Ren said after a while, sounding wholly uncommitted to his words. “Why don’t you go wash up? I’ll be out here if you need me.”

As soon as he released his grip you already started to miss the feeling of his arms wrapped around you, but unfortunately you two couldn’t hug it out forever since you both still had a job to do. Walking to your quarters you stripped off you clothing and bathed once you were safely closed inside. Hopefully the rest of the planets that you visited would be less traumatizing, though somehow that didn’t seem likely.

While inside your quarters you glanced at the tank that contained [Red], [Green], and [Blue] who sat huddled together and camouflaged as they had been yesterday. After a moment of consideration you placed the tank in a corner of the room where it would be out of sight, assuming that if Kylo found any of them he’d likely murder them. At the moment you weren’t overly fond of the tiny creatures yourself, especially considering what had just happened, but you decided to keep them alive all the same. It would be silly to begrudge them for something that they hadn’t done themselves, not to mention you wanted to keep studying them. Especially if they were the culprits for everything that was happening, you’d need all the research and knowledge on them that you could get.

 

****

 

Washing up had only slightly improved your mood. Being clean, while very nice in and of itself, hadn’t helped to rid you of the phantom sensations that made if feel like the tentacles were still holding your limbs in their iron grip. You tried rubbing your arms to get rid of it, but it only barely relieved the sensation on your arms while not doing anything about the sensation of the tentacles touching the rest of your body.

You could look down and see that obviously nothing was touching you right now, but it didn’t help. The feeling still remained. It had gone away briefly earlier, when Ren’s arms had been wrapped around you, gripping you tightly to him. He’d been very angry earlier too, and his fits of rage had already proven to be potentially dangerous in the past. Although… you weren’t dead or seriously maimed yet, not that that was a great standard. Survival was always good though, and it was more apparent than ever that you’d need Ren’s help in order to survive this chapter in your life.

Slowly, you left your quarters as soon as you were able to gather up the strength to do so. Part of you had wanted to just lay in bed, wrap yourself in a blanket and try to go to sleep, but the other part of you knew you had to tell Ren what had happened, and how you’d stumbled into the mind of another Force sensitive telepathic entity. The creature’s mind had presented a lot of information to you, but unfortunately so much of it you didn’t even understand. How to start explaining it was an even bigger mystery. There was another alternative though, not that you wanted to use it. The last time Ren had been in your mind had been complete agony, and you weren’t sure if you could go through that now.

Tentatively you made your way through the ship to find Ren, glad that his anger only felt like the smallest of simmering frustrations. It was as calm as you’d ever felt him making you a bit more comfortable about seeking him out.

Upon finding him you realized why he was so calm. He was asleep, again. He was sitting in the captain’s chair still in the clothing he’d been wearing earlier, reclining with he head back as he breathed slowly.

Sitting in the co-captain’s seat beside him you debated whether or not you should wake him. He looked so peaceful as he slept, or as peaceful as he could get. Glancing up at the destination readout you see there’s 89 hours before you get to your next destination. Surely there’d be time for you to talk to him in a few hours, it was a long trip after all. He had saved your ass too, he deserved some sleep after that. A blanket would probably be nice too, you thought to yourself as you got up to get one.

“Don’t leave…”

The soft voice made you pause and turn. Kylo Ren was still reclined and in nearly the same position, but he’d slightly lifted his head and cracked his eyes open to look at you.

“I was just going to get you a blanket.” You told him, to which he responded with a nod.

Upon returning you lightly tossed the blanket over him, even though he now seemed a bit more awake.

“I can feel there’s much weighing on your mind,” Ren stated, “is there something you wanted to tell me?”

“I do…” you started, “but I don’t know how and you should probably rest since you seem exhausted.”

“I’m fine.” he said, sitting up straighter as if to prove his point then motioned to the co-captains chair.

You sat, knowing that now Ren would refuse to sleep until he knew everything that he wanted to know. After all you didn’t become commander of the First Order by **NOT** being a control freak.

“So what happened?” He asked, and you began to explain as best you could. About the tiny creatures floating out into the field over the night and clustering around the rock formation you’d been sleeping on. Then how the feeling of restlessness had taken over and driven you to walk further out into the field and towards the lake. More hesitantly you explained how the creature had grabbed and restrained you unsure how much detail to give about what it had all done. Once you came to the mind probing you were unsure how to properly describe it, since you could’t even describe it yourself. It was if the creature’s memories were now incompatible files that you were no longer able to read without being hooked up to its brain.

Apparently sensing your distress Ren motioned for you to stop talking. “There is an easier way.” he offered, raising his hand the same way he had the first time he’d entered your mind.

“I’m not sure how I feel about that.” you said, backing away from him and sinking deeper into your chair. “Last time you did that it didn’t feel so great.”

“It won’t be like that this time.” He assured you, “I’ll be far more gentle.”

“Why couldn’t you be gentle the first time?” You grumbled, annoyed at knowing that had been an option all along.

“I thought you were Resistance scum” He stated flatly.

“And that makes it OK?”

“Just come here.” He grumbled, not stirring from where he sat.

“I am right here…” you said, unsure of how much closer he wanted you to come since you could already reach out and touch him from where you sat.

“If I’m going to gentle about retrieving the memories of the event its going to take time.” Ren explained, exhaustion more apparent in his voice now.

Once again he beckoned for you to get closer and you got up, unsure just how close he wanted you to get to him. As you stood awkwardly beside him you asked where he wanted you to go, and in response he gestured down to his lap.

Raising your eyebrow you opened your mouth to protest but he cut you off before you could speak.

“You’re going to be here for a while as well, so you may as well be comfortable too.”

Hesitantly you made to sit on the ground next to him instead, but Ren grabbed you and pulled you to himself before you were able to complete the motion. You were suddenly very aware of just how warm he was, and how the smell of burning flesh still clung to his clothes. There was also a sense of safety there as well though, and reclining against the warmth of another person was definitely better than sitting on the cold metal ground.

“This is going to be a bit uncomfortable. I’m sorry…” The latter Ren muttered very quietly as he raised his hand and gently rested it against your temple while his other arm snaked around your waist.

Just as you began to open your mouth to explain that you weren’t that uncomfortable you felt the familiar pressure of another presence entering your mind. As soon as the process of retrieving the memories had begun, you knew Ren had been under-exaggerating when he had said a ‘bit’ uncomfortable, it was extremely uncomfortable. As Ren sifted through and analyzed your memories you were forced to relive what had just happened in painful slow motion, and with Ren watching like a third person observer.

With your anxiety and distress increasing from experiencing your attack and abduction all over again Ren’s grip around you tightened, and you heard his voice faintly from somewhere outside your memories. He reminded you that you were with him now, you were safe, and he would never let those creatures touch you again. Ever.

A strong possession that frightened you just about as much as the creature’s emanated from Ren, his arm latched even more tightly around you as he viewed the memory of the creature’s own sense of possession over you. It would have been preferable to not have anyone think that they owned you, but if you had to pick it would have been Ren. At least you could understand him.

Over the next hour Ren continued to sift through memories, carefully examining the creature’s communication through bioluminescence more closely than anything. However, with neither of you having gotten adequate rest the night before, sleep slowly began to tug at your senses, luring your down into the world of peaceful darkness.

Ren was the first to nod off, his presence slowly withdrawing from your mind as he drifted away into sleep. Coming out of your own dreamlike state of reliving memories you were once again aware of your surroundings. The blanket you’d laid on Ren was now wrapped around yourself instead, along with both of his arms. For a moment you pondered procuring yourself from his grasp and going to lay down in your own bed, but you knew the motion would end up waking him. Besides, you yourself were exhausted, and just the thought of getting up and walking the short distance from here to the sleeping quarters seemed like an unbearably long journey. Instead you stayed where you were, resting your head against Ren’s chest as you allowed yourself to drift off to sleep as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also if you couldn't tell the creature's in the story are based off of cephalopods, because they're crazy awesome. And I like non-humanoid aliens.
> 
> But yeah, if you are unfamiliar with the little creatures here are a few short and funny videos that should fairly accurately describe what they're like. And even if you are familiar with them the videos are still funny and I would still recommend watching them. :P
> 
> https://youtu.be/st8-EY71K84
> 
> https://youtu.be/GDwOi7HpHtQ
> 
> Until next time, may the Force be with you!


	13. Investigation p. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. Idk this chapter just got really hard to write for some reason v.v, I don't think working 50 hours one week helped buuuuuttt, enough excuses lets get to why you came here. Happy reading and I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Overwhelming heat steadily roused you from your deep slumber. Groggily, you slowly regained awareness of the surrounding world, suddenly becoming aware of a pair of arms that held you pinned to their chest. At first you didn't remember exactly how you'd found yourself here, but you were comfortable so you remained where you were in Ren’s arms, listening to the eb and flow of his breath as he remained asleep beneath you. You continued to try to remember how you’d wound up in this position. Then it all started to come back to you.

It was strange thing to be thankful for, but you were actually quite glad you were in Kylo Ren’s arms rather than alone. Given everything that had happened you weren’t sure you’d be comfortable being by yourself for quite some time. Nevertheless you craned your head around and saw that the readout now read that there was eighty hours before you reached your destination which meant that you had slept for at least eight hours already. Hunger raked through your stomach and confirmed that it was time to get up again, and you knew that you wouldn’t be the only hungry one on the ship. However, as soon as you moved to get up you felt Ren’s arms tighten around you, apparently unwilling to let you go even in deep sleep.

After a few less than successful attempts to free yourself from Ren’s grip you had a thought.

“Hey, aren’t you hungry?” You asked him, tempting the same way you had your tauntaun back on Hoth when he was unwilling to move.

There was an incoherent murmur from Ren, but he loosened his arms enough that you were allowed to escape from their grasp. Backing up slowly from the now limp arms you procured yourself from his grip and went to prepare food for yourself, as well as the other living beings on the ship.

 

 

 

Upon plunking some protein in the tank for your trio of creatures to eat you went to grab breakfast for yourself as well as Ren. The food on the small interstellar ship wasn't nearly as good as the food back on the main star destroyer, the Finalizer, but it would due. Waking Ren up did get more difficult without the smell of freshly prepared food though.

Although by the time you were returning to the cockpit you could hear that Ren was already awake.

“Y/N? **Y/N**!?” At first he sounded groggy when he called out your name, but by the second time you could hear that he was awake and panicked.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down I’m right here.” You assured him as you walked in carrying the plates of breakfast. He was standing now and seemed almost frantic, as if you’d vanished into thin air. Placing his plate before him you sat down, raising a brow at him. Where did he think you’d gone? You were both on the same small ship and the readouts clearly indicated that all life pods were still docked. Not to mention he should have been able to notice your presence, but… he had just woken up after all. 

After taking a steadying breath Ren sat down beside you, apparently too distracted by his own thoughts to notice the food before him. Not that you could really blame him. Cold, pureed, and fortified protein wasn’t really the most appealing thing in the galaxy.

“Feeling OK?” You asked after a few moments of silence, and after a few more you finally got a response.

“I had a dream that they’d taken you from me.” Ren uttered softly, as though it was news of your imminent death rather than a dream he’d just had.

Wondering if he’d elaborate on his statement you waited a few moments, but when he didn’t you replied, “I’m sorry.” The incident was still fresh in your mind as well, although you weren’t sure that he should be as concerned as he was. It was over now. Wasn’t it?

He looked over at you, a mixed expression on his face. Meanwhile you could feel him fighting inside himself, deciding which of his thoughts, if any, to voice.

“Well, I’m here now and I’m fine.” You assured him, even though you felt that it did nothing of the sort.

“I’m not sure how long it will remain that way.” Ren replied, sounding as forlorn as before.

“But it was just a dream, right?” You asked, “Don’t worry about it, you’ve done fine looking after me so far.”

“That’s the problem.” He said, “With Force users dreams aren’t always just dreams.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that unless I can find a way to change the current course of events…” The words had come tumbling out of his mouth until he caught himself, taking a deep breath as he once again debated how much to tell you.

“Can you please just talk to me?” You asked after a few more moments of his brooding silence. “If you want to keep me from harm and keep me close to you then you have to stop keeping me at arms length first.”

Anger flared up in him, and for a moment you worried that you had gone too far, but it abated fairly soon, and thankfully he started to speak once more after that.

“You don’t understand how rare it is for us to just _find_ someone like you.” He said, gazing intently at you where you sat across from him. “In the middle of one of the most pivotal times of my campaign you were dropped in my lap like a blessing and a curse from the universe itself. I thought I would have a weapon, an assassin, and perhaps even a partner by my side, but now I’m left to fear if I’ll have you long enough to even know you.”

He frowned, and so did you, not sure that you really understood much of what he had told you. Sighing Ren pinched his brow, no doubt sensing that you were still confused.

“How much do you currently know about the conflict between the First Order and the Resistance?” He asked.

“It’s…” You thought for a moment, “happening?” You shrugged, current events had never been very interesting to you. Most of what you did wouldn’t have been effected either way if one side or the other had won.

Half strangling an exasperated sigh Ren asked, “Very well, do you know who Rey or Luke Skywalker are?”

“I haven't heard of Rey, but Luke Skywalker…” You muttered, “I thought I saw his name in a few of those volumes you had me read, wasn’t he a Jedi?”

“Not _just_ a Jedi. A Jedi **Master** , and one of the most powerful to have ever lived.” The last he said very quietly, and with a detectable edge of resentment.

“So what does he have to do with this?”

“He has **everything** to do with this.” Ren said, voice rising along with his anger. “I, _we_ , must both be ready to face him as soon as we return from this journey.”

Your jaw dropped. “I mean… _you_ can win, right?” You asked hopefully, but you felt no confidence from him.

“Oh come on…” you muttered in disbelief, “You mop the floor with me when we spar, and this Luke must be ancient by now, why don’t you think you can beat him?”

“Because last time we fought, I lost.” Ren muttered this fact very quietly, and from his tone it was obviously a sore point of contempt for him. “And now the Supreme leader expects I’ll be able to train you effectively enough to change the tide of our next batter, since Luke still seeks to confront me and end the war.”

Suddenly you almost wished he continued to keep this information to himself. It made sense now why he was angry about the tracking data that you’d been initially abducted over. The Resistance wasn’t just tracking any First Order ships, they’d been tracking _Kylo Ren_ 's ship, because the Resistance, specifically Luke, were looking to make their final strike against him. It was probably why the training location had been targeted as well, and why you and Ren and been hurried away to the outer rim and far away from any conflict so quickly afterwards.

Everything was starting to fall into place, but as events fell into focus, a concerning truth glared to light. Death was closing in around you from all sides. A Jedi Master sought to confront and kill your master, and likely you with him, and you had to train in the harshest and most dangerous of environments before you were ready to face him. It felt like your life had gone from fast to light speed in a few seconds, and you sat dazed for a few moments as your head reeled.

Kylo Ren sat and stared as you continued to spiral into deeper anxiety, worrying about all the possible ways that you could die before you ever even got to face Luke.

“This is why I didn’t want you to know until it was necessary.” He muttered, regretful upon seeing how distressed you’d become.

“Its alright…” You said with a deep breath, doing your best to calm yourself. “I’m glad you told me.”

“I’m certain that now you understand why I am eager to train you as quickly as possible.”

“Yeah,” you nodded slowly, “I definitely understand that better now.”

Ren glanced up at the time read out which displayed that there were less than eighty hours now before you would arrive at your destination.

“We can work on meditating until we get to our next destination. If or when we encounter more of those creatures you’ll need to have your metal defenses in peak form or…” He let the sentence hang unfinished, apparently unwilling to say the last few words aloud.

“It won’t come to that.” you assured him, while simultaneously assuring yourself.

Ren didn’t smile, and you could feel that he was fighting keep any hope that he had under control.

“Shall we begin?” he asked, extending his hand.

Extending your own you took his more confidently this time, glad to once again feel yourself immersed in the Force as it ebbed and flowed around you. At first you had worried that concentration would be more difficult with the new worries inside your head, but the knowledge of the immediate danger that you faced had actually served as good motivation to remain focused. Not to mention it was nice that this time you wouldn’t be interrupted by incoming messages or summonings meetings. Only you and Ren were here now and no one was going to interrupt you.

 

****

 

After the allotted time had passed you found your ship entering into orbit around yet another planet that had only been assigned a number, 545-632. Gazing down at it as it hung in the black expanse of space you saw nothing but varying shades of grey and brown on its surface. Despite the bleak conditions you were actually looking forward to heading down to the planet’s surface. Lately you’d been getting woken up in the middle of the night by a certain droid who you’d caught in your room seemingly observing you, every single night since you’d gotten back from the first hell-hole of a planet that you had visited.

Other than R6 acting more irritating than a young sibling it had actually been a relatively nice journey. The hours had been passed by meditating, stretching, and exercising together. The exercise had to be minimal since there was little room to do it in, but you were glad that Ren actually remained around to do it with you, rather than isolating himself for the entirety of the trip again.

“Minimal life readings, but they’re there.” You stated as the ship continued to circle lower, entering into the thin atmosphere of the planet.

“We’ll need to be extra careful,” Ren stated. “anything that’s able to survive down there is a force to be reckoned with.”

“No kidding…” You muttered as you browsed through the known species of the planet, all them had very high hazard ratings, and their profiles were littered with warnings not to approach. Unlike planet 224-687, this planet seemed to have been recently and thoroughly documented, and the date stamps on the information showed that it had been within the last few galactic months. 

Checking on the records you confirmed what you had suspected. The disappearances you were investigating were those of the researchers who had been cataloguing the planet. Also unlike planet 224-687 it seemed that this planet had a last transmission that was flagged as possible evidence.

Tapping a few buttons you brought the video up on your data pad. A young, and very frazzled looking, woman sat before the screen, dark circles under her eyes as a testament to her exhaustion. Unfortunately from the quality of the video it seems like it had been damaged, crackles of static running across the screen occasionally.

The woman who sat before the camera was speaking franticly but for some reason, probably for the same reason the video was damaged, there was no audio to accompany what you were seeing. It was unnerving to watch the woman get more and more frantic in the absolute silence, not knowing what it was that was making her eyes keep darting off screen like that. Before you could attempt to read her lips or glean any more information from the background the transmission died out.

“Time for another fun round of guess what killed everyone.” You muttered sarcastically, putting your data pad aside and evaluating the temperature and life reading monitors once more.

Ren gave you a look in response to your remark, but didn’t further respond. Instead he started making the preparations for landing, as you both braced yourself for what was to come.

 

****

 

Had you arrived when the facility was fully functioning you may have never seen it. It had originally been designed to blend into the rocks around it, and look like just another part of the scenery. However, its camouflage was more or less ruined by the fact that something had torn open one of the main hangar doors, exposing the metallic interior.

“We shouldn’t stay out in the open long.” Ren stated, his voice low and distorted by his mask.

Nodding in agreement you followed him into facility, going in through the large torn open hangar bay. Inside as well as out there were multiple gouges in the rock as well as the metal flooring beneath your feet. The gouges weren’t deep in the metal, but it was enough to concern you, especially since you were fairly certain they were made by one of the planet’s native species. Anything that could damage metal and rock like that was definitely not something you ever wanted to run into.

Picking your way through the wreckage and following behind Ren you glanced around for other evidence that might shed more light on what happened during the attacks, but from the looks of it, the place had just been ripped apart by a Thrylack. Thrylacks were one of the largest and most brutal of the species on the planet, the apex predator, and very well known for their hard impenetrable armor. A thrylack’s exoskeleton was so dense and hard, that it could even gouge into rocks as it dug, looking for prey. The more you looked around, the more you suspected that that was what had happened.

Eventually you both found your way into one of the central control rooms of the facility, which hadn’t been too difficult given its small size. As you had made your way deeper inside the facility the damage lessened drastically, but there was still no sign of any human life, or even any remains. There had been a few splashes of blood in the main hangar, but you had yet to see the body. You had a strong suspicion that it was because they’d been eaten, but that wasn’t something you necessarily wanted to think about.

Pausing, Ren turned to one of the doors in the hallway you’d been traversing, and with a sweeping motion opened it using the Force. Inside there were banks of computer terminals, or at least there would have been, had they not been plucked apart into thousands of pieces.

Despite how disappointed you were it was unfortunately the least of your worries right now, the fact that the pattern of dismantling was incredibly similar to what you’d seen on the previous planet was what concerned you most. Once again everything had been taken apart, if for no other reason than curiosity. There wasn’t anything valuable missing that you noticed, and if anything had been taken it was small and obscure, or random. The similarities were too many for you to be comfortable with, and from the rising anger you felt from Ren you guessed that he had made the same connection. Both of you knew that the other had recognized this, but it wasn’t a topic you wanted to push with Ren while his anger was rising just from seeing it.

“We might be able to salvage some of the information from these.” Ren said, picking up a few of the internal memory disks that laid mixed in with the other pieces, pointedly avoiding the topic of what might have happened to these computers. Stooping down you helped gather the few memory disks that you could spy scattered amongst the debris.

As soon as you were both satisfied that you wouldn’t find anything else of use you moved to leave, suddenly feeling much more tense than you had when you walked in. For once it was nice to have Ren striding briskly in front of you, because for no obvious reason an unidentifiable sense of dread had settled into your stomach. A tingling running down your spine urged you to pick up the pace, but you kept in step behind Ren, not wanting to suddenly sprint out in front of him for no reason.

Light spilled into the hangar from the now permanently opened bay door, the light glinting off of the twisted metal. The quality of the light was getting warmer, and more orange, meaning the sun was setting soon. Upon reaching the mouth of the hangar you hesitated and ran your eyes over the scene of destruction one more time before turning towards the door, looking forward to the safety of your own ship.

As you turned you almost ran straight into Ren, who’d paused his rapid pace and stood motionless at the entrance of the hangar.

“Hey, what’s–“ your question was answered for you before you could finish it. As you’d leaned your head around Ren to get a look at what he was staring at you knew instantly why he stood frozen like a statue.

Perched on top of your ship was a large adult thrylack, waving its sensitive sensory receptors over the hull. Its spindly legs clacked as it adjusted its perch atop the ship, making an awful screeching sound every now and then when the creature slipped, scrapping the tips of its legs across the metal of the ship.

Both of you stood in silence and watched the creature as each tense moment slowly crawled by. Ren was likely hoping, like you were, that the creature would loose interest and move on, but with dusk nearly upon you it wasn’t a good time to be standing and waiting out in the open.

With his aggravation still high from moments before it didn’t take Ren long before he lost his patience, grabbing his lightsaber from his belt and igniting it with a loud crackling whoosh. Brandishing his weapon he moved to attack the creature.

You opened your mouth to call out to him, but before any sound came out someone else behind you yelled,

_**“Wait!!”** _

You whipped your headaround to see a young and very timid looking man standing and cowering in one of the hallways that led to the inner rooms of the facility.

“ _Wait_ , please don’t go out there.” He was talking very quickly, voice half shaking. “Not right now, please you’ll be killed, please just come back inside.”

You turned to see that Kylo Ren had paused as well, probably just as taken aback as you were to have suddenly heard another person.

“You don’t think I can kill it?” Ren asked in mock insult.

“I-I think you could kill one…maybe.” The man stammered, “But uh, if you take a closer look at that ridge line, you’ll see that there’s at least ten to fifteen more. I uh- I think the sound and sudden appearance of your ship drew a lot of attention.”

More painful silence passed, but finally Ren deactivated his saber and replaced it on his belt. The rage that had been growing within him was being fueled even further now.

“Oh thank you.” The man sighed in relief. “Please, this way, this way, quickly please.”

Giving your now inaccessible ship one last glance you followed after Ren and your new found companion, wondering how long you’d be stuck down here, and if you be stuck down here with anything other than thrylacks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wish me luck on writing the next chapter! I'm hoping that with the extra free time I have coming up I'll be able to post more regularly. Hope you all have a lovely day. :3
> 
> I also really need to take a day and do some editing because… eesh I was re reading a few chapters for continuity and god damn all of the errors… I am so sorry my writing is such a hot mess, thank you to everyone who puts up with it. You're the best.


	14. Bunkers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo what's up!? So this would have gotten published faster if my computer hadn't EATEN THE FIRST TWO VERSIONS. Seriously in the middle of working on this chapter I had the software crash and delete the original file TWICE. So this is the third version of this chapter. (I'm glad I don't actually have a lightsaber otherwise I might have gone Kylo Ren on this laptop the other morning.)
> 
> Hopefully you enjoy because I've been staring at this for way too long and I don't even know how I feel about it anymore.

The sound of your boots echoed off the walls around you as you followed the newly found survivor deeper into the base. With the sun having set several minutes ago, only the red emergency lights overhead light your path. An uneasy weight was beginning to form in the pit of your stomach, causing you to glance back every few steps. All you ever saw when you looked back was the dark looming figure of Ren as he walked behind you, but you kept expecting to see a set of armored legs and pincers coming around one of the corners.

“It's not much farther now.” Your companion stated, continuing to walk quickly in front of you. He too was looking back over his shoulder every now and then, as well as glancing around nervously at every shadow and concealed area.

“It's just down this hallway.” The man said, but just as he did the sound that everyone was dreading started echoing against the walls. Loud clanks, distant sounding at first but quickly getting closer. In the dim light there would be no way to see it until it was right on top of you.

“Run!” The man in front of you yelled, not that he needed to. By the time he had yelled it out you had all started running already. Everyone except for Kylo Ren.

Partway down the hallway you realized this, stopping yourself in alarm. Turning back you see Ren illuminated by one of the red lights and standing still as a statue, waiting for the thrylack to approach. Before you could open your mouth to call out to him he ignited his lightsaber, its red glow revealing the creature that was now only a few feet in front of him.

It all happened in a few seconds. Kylo Ren rose his hand and froze the creature where it was, just moments before it had rushed forward to crush him with its large front pincers. Ren then rose his lightsaber and then drove it downwards through the creature’s armored skull and into the soft flesh beneath. 

The creature continued to struggled against the Force grip that held it, drawing a hiss of anger from Ren's voice synthesizer. Moments later you saw bolts of electricity arcing through his hands and lightsaber and into the body of the thrylack. A high pitched screech emitted from the creature, though you couldn’t be sure if it was the creature itself crying in pain, or just the sound of the electricity boiling it alive. 

Blue light from the Force lightning illuminated the metallic hallways for several seconds before Kylo Ren finally seemed satisfied, releasing his hold on the creature and letting it slump into the ground with a loud thud. He then deactivated his lightsaber and clipped it back onto his belt, walking away from the smoking caracas calmer than you’d felt him in a while.

“Keep up,” Ren told you, ”there’s probably more.” He swept past you and towards where the man who lifting a panel out from the middle of the floor. The man pushed the heavy metal panel to the side, revealing a ladder that led straight downwards into pitch darkness. 

“Unfortunately the lights that used to illuminate the shaft got damaged during the attack.” The man said. “You get used to it though. OK, you guys need to go first. I have to make sure to get this panel back into place properly. We use it as part of our defense system, we run an electric current through it, that way it deters any wandering thrylacks, umanders, holokrills–”

Ren had already begun to descend the ladder before the man could finish his tangent about the electrified floor, apparently undaunted by the dark. Having no other choice you followed after him, waiting a while for Ren to climb down to give him room before you started downwards yourself.  Once you were in the shaft itself, you started to hear the clanking of something approaching from above once again. This time the clanks were closer together, and more hurried, as if this thrylack was running toward you down the metal hallways.

“Shit, shit, shit.” The timid man above you cursed to himself, his hands shaking as he moved to quickly get the metal panel fitted back into place above his head. With the second thrylack bearing down on you his hands shook as he struggled to grab the panel and get it fitted back into place on time. By the time you head the thud of the panel as it was slid back into place, the thrylack sounded like it was almost on top of you.

A few moments of silence followed after the metal panel was secured above you, plunging the underground shaft into now complete darkness. The sound of your breath was the only thing that you heard until a crashing bang pierced your eardrums. Apparently the thrylack above you had begun throwing itself at the floor, or at least that’s what it felt and sounded like. The sheer force of the thrylack crashing its head into the floor was enough to almost jostle you off of the ladder, which you then clung to as if your life depended on it. Had you been able to see your knuckles at all they would have definitely been white.

“Hurry!” You heard the man above you call down, the sounds of his descending steps quickly approaching where you clung to the ladder. Beginning to move again you made your way downwards as quickly as you could, despite being unable to see anything that you were doing.

After several tense minutes of downward climbing you finally felt your foot make contact with solid ground underneath it. Cautiously feeling your way off of the ladder you backed away from it to give the man above you room to come down. After taking only a step backwards you felt your back connect with Ren’s chest, who gave a small involuntary grunt, but otherwise didn’t react.

“It’s going to be a bit cramped down here.” The timid man said, as you heard him descending and his feet finding the solid floor as well. “The switch to open the door should be around here somewhere.” The man said, and you felt him brush past you as he felt around in the dark for the control panel that would open up the chamber.

A loud hiss cut through the silence as the man found the switch and opened the airlock and the previously pitch black chamber. Covering your eyes against the sudden harsh white light you stumbled out of the chamber, blinking as you adjusted to being able to see again.

“You actually made it back alive.” Came the low voice of a second unknown man. “I must say I really am impressed.”

With your eyes mostly working once again you got a good look at the room you’d found yourself in now. From its appearances and its location you guessed that it was the base’s emergency bunker. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made with the same flat grey concrete, and any furnishings were minimal.

“So who the hell are you people anyways?” The second, larger man asked. His voice lacking any hint of respect. He strode over to where you stood, looking at Ren up and down as if he'd never seen something like him before. 

“That’s none of your concern.” Ren responded.

“Oh no no no.” The second man said, with a light chuckle that lacked any humor. “That’s not how this is going to work. See, we rescued you and no–”

Kylo Ren whipped his hand up and in an instant the man was silenced. The second man’s face was suddenly terrified, his face turning a deep shade of red as he grasped at his throat.

“This will work,” Ren said, his voice low and angry, “however I say it works. Understand.”

You weren’t sure but you thought you saw a small waver of a nod from the second man before Ren released the Force chokehold he had on the man, allowing him to fall to the ground. 

The second man gasped for breath from where he lay on the ground, a bit of drool dribbling from his mouth and he coughed and gagged. The first man was pressed up against the wall on the opposite side of the room, a look of horror on his face.

“You.” Kylo Ren said, turning his attention to the more timid man who was plastered to the wall in fear. Raising his hand again Ren pulled the timid man over with the Force, holding him still just inches in front of his chrome mask. Holding his hand out over the man’s head you felt Ren begin to delve through his memories. The timid man’s face screwed up in discomfort, squeezing his eyes shut, his mouth clenched in a grimace. 

With Ren ripping through the timid man’s brain and the second man still on the ground trying to catch his breath you were left to stand awkwardly and wait. Your gaze wandered over the sparse room several times, never finding much to look at no matter how many times your eyes roved over it. 

Having found whatever he was looking for Ren released his grasp on the timid man, allowing him to fall to the ground. The timid man was now gasping just as bad as the second larger man was, clearly upset by whatever he had just relived in his own mind.

“I am in charge here now.” Ren said, addressing both of the men on the floor. “Understood?”

They both nodded, but where you felt pure terror from the timid man, the second man could be felt beginning to harbor anger and resentment.

“Once the sun rises and our ship is clear we will be leaving.” Ren said, the mention of the ship catching their attention. “If you prove that you can be useful, you might find yourself on it.” 

Amongst the fear and resentment you felt a glimmer of hope from both of the men. With any luck that hope would be enough to keep them from doing anything that would really piss Ren off. 

 

*    *    *    *

 

The nighttime hours slowly crawled by as you sat huddled in one of the inner sleeping chambers of the bunker. It was obvious that Ren didn’t trust either of the men who were down here, and now thanks to Ren’s outburst neither of them trusted him either. Although they were also both terrified of Ren, which could end up being either a good or a bad thing. Gloomily you wondered for the millionth time how you’d wound up stuck with this violent tyrant, and more curiously how you hadn’t been on the receiving end of his violent outbursts more often. It seemed like everyone else he came into contact with was at risk, but for the most part you seemed to get a pass.

It was good that he did seem to tolerate you more than other people, especially since you had to be with him all the time. Like right now. The room you were crammed into was intended to be for only one person, and it was sparse even for a single occupant. The bed barely accommodate you, and currently Ren took up what little floor space there was, his legs stretched out in front of him, and his back resting against the door.

“You’re going to freeze if you sleep down there.” You said, frowning over at him. The heating unit for the bunker was broken, and you'd been told you'd need to "bundle up" if you wanted to stay warm throughout the night. It would have been nice had there been a single pillow or blanket to bundle up with.

“I’ve slept in worse conditions.” He assured you, voice devoid of any concern for himself.

“Are you…?” Furrowing your brow you looked over at him, glad his helmet was finally removed now that it was just the two of you. “Are you lying to me?” You asked, curious not only to the answer, but if the nagging feeling in your gut was correct.

A small smirk tugged at the corners of Ren’s lips. “I was wondering when you’d be able to sense as much.” He said, sounding half pleased and half disappointed. 

Giving a sigh you frowned at him. “I’d rather not wake up to find you hypothermic in the morning.”

“I”ll be fine. Besides, where else am I supposed to sleep?” 

You sat up and indicated the bed. “Perfectly nice place to sleep right here.”

“I’m not kicking you onto the floor.”

“You won’t be kicking me onto the floor. We’re both adults, we can share. Its not like we haven’t done it in the past.” You pointed out, remembering back to when you’d slept in his arms with only a captain’s chair to sleep on that time. Compared to sleeping in a chair this was downright luxurious. 

There were a few painful moments of silence before Ren lifted himself up off of the ground and sat on the bed beside you, his weight shifting the mattress and causing you to involuntarily slide into him. The next thing you knew he’d grabbed hold of you, pulling you to himself while he laid down, making sure you were on top so that he wouldn’t crush you underneath himself.

“There,” Ren said, once you were both comfortable. “Is that better?”

“Yes.” you said with a content sigh, much more comfortable and warm now than you had been before. 

“Good.” He muttered, his breath ruffling your hair. “Now try to get some sleep.”

Relaxing against him as he looped an arm around your waist you did just that, exhaustion overcoming you within a matter of minutes.

 

*    *    *    *

 

A sharp pain from your face connecting suddenly with something cold and flat instantly woke you from one of the deepest sleeps of your life. There were a few seconds of complete confusion as you tried to figure out where you were, and why the hell you’d been sleeping on the floor. Then you looked up, and everything became clear.

Kylo Ren lay on his stomach with his arm draped over the side of the bed. Apparently he’d rolled over in his sleep, throwing you off and onto the floor where you now found yourself. 

Moving to get up you paused, your attention being drawn to what seemed like a ripple in the shadows. Getting up more slowly this time you moved to investigate the area where you’d seen the ripple, but before you could something lunged out and latched itself onto your face, covering your mouth and nose.

Instinctively your hands moved immediately to try and remove the creature that now clung to the front of your face, its tentacles wrapping around the back of your head as it got a better hold on you. Fear screamed along your nerves as confusion wracked your brain. There wasn’t much time for you to think before you found yourself struggling to resist a mental attack from a creature that you didn’t think should have been even capable. It did seem to be the same species as the kind you had encountered on the previous planet but this one was much smaller, and presumably younger than the one that had abducted you then. However, you could feel some kind of larger, older, more experienced mind lurking somewhere behind the mind of the small creature that now fought to keep itself held over your mouth. 

As you struggled to get your attacker off of your face and away from your mouth, it continued to fight to enter your mind. Thankfully your meditation sessions with Ren meant that you could at least put up a fight to keep it out, but doing so was much more difficult when you were trying to fight off something trying to suffocate you at the same time.

Sliding yourself along the floor with your legs while your hands continued to struggle with the creature you reached out for Ren’s arm which still hung limply off the side of the bed. Snatching one of your arms away from your face you reached out to Ren. When you felt your fingers brush across the fabric on his arm you grabbed and tugged as hard as you could.

There wasn’t enough time for you to see if your efforts had worked. With your concentration split it was enough to weaken your focus and allow the creature to worm its way into your mind. Reality began to fall away as the creature, guided by a much stronger entity that seemed to loom somewhere in the background of its mind, began to dig through your memories. Like before, images from past events were dredged up and flipped past your vision like a drunken picture book. 

Flashpoint anger suddenly drew your attention outside of yourself, and you heard from far away someone yell “ **Don’t move.** ” Only a second later the unstable beam of Ren’s lightsaber flashed in front of your face, dangerously close to your features.

Having been cleanly cut in half the creature relinquished its grip on your mouth, its grasping tentacles needing to be ripped off by hand. Stooping down Ren helped to disentangle to creature’s tentacles which had wrapped themselves into your hair. His gloved hands ghosting over your face, the soft leather brushing against your cheeks as he observed you, checking for any damage that the creature, or he himself, may have done.

“I’m alright,” You muttered softly, “thank you.”

“What were you doing on the floor?” He asked, apparently bewildered as to how you could have wound up down there.

Glowering at him you opened your mouth to explain exactly why you were down here, but before you could a pounding on your door drew your attention.

“Hey, the sun’s up.” A voice called from the other side of the door. It sounded like it was the second larger man. “We have a few good hours if you want to get back to the ship, but we’ll need to hurry.”

Both you and Ren straightened up off the floor. After looking you over one more time Ren drew his attention away from you, retrieving his helmet which he’d put to the side on the only table in the room. With his intimidation device fitted back over his head he opened the door and swept out of the room. It was obvious that he wanted to get back to the ship as soon as possible, and so did you. Considering how dangerous the tentacled creatures got at such a young age, it was probably about time that you disposed of the three creature’s that you still kept in there.


	15. Bloodshed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this ended up being a really long chapter I guess, that's why it took a bit longer.  
> That and it was 4/20 recently, and if anyone has looked at my profile you know what that means. B)  
> Hope you all have been doing well, and I hope you enjoy the chapter! :D

Tension filled the room as soon as you and Kylo Ren entered it. The discomfort that you felt from the timid man was so palpable that you could almost taste it. The second larger man also harbored quite a bit of fear, but there was anger and resentment mixed in with his emotions as well. 

“Well since we didn’t get to introductions yesterday,” The larger of the two men said, “My name is Garrett, and this is Molin.” He punctuated the end of his sentence by gesturing to his more timid companion.

There was a long silence where a less hostile person would have introduced themselves in return, but Ren did no such thing. Instead he stared down the two men, almost daring them to ask his name.

Having apparently expected this kind of response Garrett continued, “Well we have a few hours of daylight during which the thrylacks should be higher up on the ridges sunning themselves. If we get going now we should be safe.”   
“Do you have any surveillance that can assure us of that safety?” Ren asked.

Shaking his head Garrett responded, “No, we only have a crude aerial radar that detected your ship entering the atmosphere. Besides that we have no way of detecting if one of those creatures are waiting up there for us or not.”   
“We’ll scout out the area first then. _Wait here_.” Ren said firmly, turning his attention on you.

Before you could open your mouth to object Molin chimed in, “Can I wait here too?”

Ren didn’t react to him, already walking towards the shaft that led to the surface. 

“Yeah, you can wait here.” Garrett said, sounding almost relieved. “That would probably be for the best.” He muttered, walking past as he followed Ren into the shaft that led to the surface.

Part of you felt like you were being treated like an incompetent child, but the other part of you was grateful that you wouldn’t have to possibly face a thrylack. Ren had already more than proved that he could handle himself around them, so if one of you had to face them it may as well have been him.

The dull thud of the door to the shaft closing echoed in the small concrete shelter, along with the clunking of the men’s boots as they ascended the ladder. As soon as they were out of auditory range you could feel your anxiety begin to build. What if something happened to them? What if Garrett tried to get revenge on Ren for the previous night? What if you were stuck dow-

“Oh wow, this is tense huh?” Molin said, slowly inching his way closer to you. Turning to him you smiled and nodded briefly. Fear and tension even stronger than what you were feeling was boiling off of the man, and that was not something that you felt like dealing with at the moment. Currently you were more concerned with focusing and sensing Kylo Ren’s presence so that you could assure yourself that he was still alive. It was a bit difficult since he was still less angry than normal, and there was a bundle of anxious and distracting energy right beside you now. 

“So uh, are you guys some kind of Jedi, or…?” Molin asked you, breaking your concentration yet again. Especially since you weren’t even sure what you were. Even though from what you’d been taught you could be sure that you weren’t a Jedi, you weren’t too sure that you were a Sith either. From what you’d read there were more religious aspects to being Sith that Kylo Ren had not included in your training thus far, leaving you uncertain as to what you would be technically termed. At the very least though, you were aware of what you weren’t.

“No.” You replied shortly in response to Molin’s question, going back to concentrating on sensing Kylo Ren’s Force signature. Thankfully he still felt fairly calm, but he’d felt calm when he’d been killing the thrylack last night, so it didn’t do too much to put your nerves at ease. 

“Oh… I uh…” Molin’s tone faltered for a moment, but he recovered quickly was back to talking and trying to strike up a conversation yet again. “Well no matter what you are we sure are glad that you’re here. Garrett and I have been stuck down here for quite some time. See, I’m a biologist here and Garrett was one of the guards that we had hired. Initially there were fifteen guards alone before the attack, not to mention all the scientists.”

Molin then proceeded to start listing off the names off all the scientists, guards, technicians, and was starting in on the janitorial staff when you started losing your patience. Clearly the man was just babbling to relieve the tension that he felt given the situation, but it was doing nothing but making you more tense. It was becoming more and more difficult to concentrate on what was happening with Ren as he got further away, and Molin’s chatter becoming increasingly irritating.

“Will you please, stop talking.” You said through gritted teeth, sending a pointed glare in Molin’s direction.

For a few moments things fell silent and you were hopeful that Molin would actually respect your request, but moments later he was back at it again, now miserably trying to apologize. 

Giving a heavy sigh you hung your head and rested it in your hand, almost regretting that you had said anything at all. With the constant auditory assault on your ears you began thinking of ways that you could quickly silence him. There was always your lightsaber. No way Molin would ever stand a chance, if his past behavior was any indication he probably wouldn’t even put up a fight. However, you weren’t quite desperate enough to commit cold blooded murder.

“-just so sorry. I mean, I never really get to talk to anyone. Garrett definitely isn’t much of a talker, and neither are the thrylacks, obviously.” He gave a forced laugh at his own joke, causing you to audibly groan.

“Stop talking. _Now_.” You said as firmly as possible, your frustration kindling into a stronger rage as the man ignored what you said again and opted to keep talking instead.

It was now impossible for you to focus on Ren at all, further fueling your anger towards the man that was distracting you with his nonsense. It also gave you an idea.

Using the frustration and anger that you felt you reached out to the Force, finding the wavering and flickering fire like side of it answering your call. With your anger filled grasp on the Force you focused your attention on Molin, willing him with your whole mind to do as you said.”

“ **You will stop talking now**.” You said firmly, staring directly into his eyes and seeing with satisfaction as they began to gloss over.

“ _I will stop talking now_.” Molin said, repeating your own words back to you. 

There were several minutes that you allowed to go by in blissful silence once you had confirmed that your mind trick had worked and Molin really was done talking. 

Able to concentrate once more you focus your attention back on Ren, glad that you were still able to sense him when you checked. He felt more tense than calm, but he was still alive and that was what mattered.

The minutes continued to slowly tick by, and Ren continued to feel calm for each one of them. Perhaps you’d be able to get off safely after all. With any luck the outside conditions would be similar to when you’d arrived and you’d be able to walk out without any issue. 

Feeling more confident in your master’s return, and your eventual departure it seemed like now would be as good of time as any to practice the new technique you’d just taught yourself. Ren always was emphasizing how you should use the Force at all times to train yourself.

Turning your attention back to Molin you focused on directing your will at him again using the Force.

“ **Jump up and down on one foot**.” You told him, remembering how it had felt moments ago when it had succeeded by focusing intently on willing him to do just that.

To your surprise and amusement he repeated back, “ _I will jump up and down on one foot_.” and then proceeded to do it.

“ **Now rub your stomach with one hand.** ” You commanded him.

“ _I will rub my stomach with one hand_.” He complied, once again moving to do as you said.

“ **Now pat your head with the other hand**.”

“ _I will pat my head with my other hand._ ”

At this point you had to cover up your mouth to keep from laughing, but then you remembered there was no one to care if you laughed. It felt good to open up and let yourself laugh, something you hadn’t been able to do much of since being captured by the First Order. But watching a full grown man who was now completely at your mercy, jumping up and down while patting his head and his stomach at the same time was enough to make you nearly die of laughter.

Just as you were in the middle of making Molin do whatever other things came to your mind there was a loud thud from the other side of the room as the door to the shaft slid open.

Kylo Ren stopped as he strode into the room, staring at Molin who was acting like an absolute idiot to any outside observer. 

As Ren stood and impassively observed the man’s strange behavior Garrett walked in, much more alarmed by the current circumstances than anyone else in the room.

“What the hell is going on!?” Garrett exclaimed, upon witnessing his companion’s erratic and unexplained behavior. Striding over to Molin Garrett grabbed hold of him, trying to shake him into responding as he shouted his name.

“You.” Garret angrily turned his attention on you when he couldn’t coax a response from Molin. “What the hell did you do to him!?” Before he could take a step towards you Kylo Ren had grabbed his shoulder, shoving him backwards away from you.

“ **Molin stop what you’re doing and go back to normal**.” you said, releasing the man from the hold the Force still had on his mind. Blinking a few times Molin looked around, jumping and giving a gasp when he caught sight of Garrett and Kylo Ren.

“Wait what– when did they get here?” Molin asked, pointing at the other two men and sounding baffled.

“The area is secure.” Kyo Ren said, turning his attention on you and ignoring Molin. “We should leave now.”

 

*    *    *    *

 

Bright white light from outside lit up the inside of the base once again when you emerged from the underground shaft. Kylo Ren led your mismatched group with you following right behind him, and Garrett bringing up the rear. 

Tensions and hopes were high as you made your way through the hangar below. So far the only evidence of a thrylack that you had seen had been the burnt out carcass near the shaft that led to the surface. You had already known that one would be there though.

Besides the sounds of the group’s footfalls, everything was silent. It was almost too quiet for your liking, but as you looked forward you could see your ship through the torn open hole in the bay door. From what you could see it was free of any thrylacks, or anything else for that matter, and even better looked like it was completely untouched.

Relief was what you had been expecting to feel when you walked outside, but instead a deep sense of dread began to grow in the pit of your stomach. Not only a few steps outside the door the feeling had grown so intense that you almost wanted to dash back inside. Ren continued with his quick pace in front of you though, making his way straight towards the ship without looking back. As you moved quickly to keep up with him you glanced back, looking for any remote sign of danger.

In less than a second of turning around you knew immediately what had you so on edge. A pair of pincers was poised just above the peak of the rock formation that hid the complex. Quickening your pace you kept an eye on the thrylack that was making its way down the side of the complex and toward your group. However, with your attention diverted you didn’t see when Ren stopped in front of you, causing you to walk directly into him. 

Both of you grunted, turning to the other to try and figure out what had just happened. As you looked over Ren’s shoulder, and he over yours, you both realized at the same moment that you were screwed. 

Coming over the side of the ship was not one, but two thrylacks. As if they had been hiding on the other side of the ship, waiting to ambush you when you got close enough. Meanwhile behind you, three thrylacks were now making their way towards you from the base, positioned between you and the bay doors. The damn things had  somehow set a trap. None of it made sense. From all the data you had read about these creatures they were supposed to be slow witted solitary hunters. They sunned themselves to gain warmth and energy during the day, and then chased after anything that moved at during the transitional hours of dusk and dawn, including other thrylacks. 

The group stood still as the monstrous creatures moved to circle you, rather than attack. 

“T-this isn’t normal.” Molin whispered to you, his voice shaking. He felt just as alarmed, if not more so than you were. “They don’t hunt in packs like this. I… I’ve never seen them do anything like this before.”

Looking at him you saw his eyes were wide with horror, as if reality itself was slipping away before his eyes. Turning to Ren to see what he would do you feel him resign himself to his fate, pulling his saber from his belt and igniting it with a whoosh. Mirroring him you pulled out yours as well, bracing yourself as you watched the thrylacks continue to inch closer.

“ _Stay back_.” Ren commanded you, rushing forward and striking out at the closest thrylack. His blade cleanly cut off the creature’s right pincer, but rather than cripple the creature, the injury only seemed to enrage it. Lashing its head around it lunged towards Ren who swung his saber and sliced off its left pincer and then drove the blade into the creature’s head up to the hilt.

While Ren was in the middle of killing the first thrylack the others rushed forward. As one moved to grasp you in its pincers you ducked and rolled out of the way, striking at it and putting a sizable gouge in its front leg. 

Behind you, shots rang out as Garrett began to fire his blaster into a thrylack that was bearing down on Molin and himself. Large burns were melted into the creature’s thick exoskeleton, but none of the blasts were able to penetrate the creature’s armor.

Before you could worry about Garrett and Molin’s fate the thrylack that was attacking you was resumed its assault. Despite the large burnt gash in its front leg it had hesitated for only a few moments before it charged again.

Now that you had a better understanding of how quickly the creatures could move you waited a little bit longer before dodging, and taking more time to place a well timed slash with your lightsaber that cleanly took off one of the creature’s pincers.

Despite its injuries the thrylack continued to charge at you until you had taken off its other pincer and then severed one of the legs. Even after being crippled the creature was still struggling to attack you, leaving you no choice but to keep slashing away at it until it was out of its misery.

It didn’t make any sense, none of this made any sense. These creatures were acting coordinated and suicidal at the same time, what in the galaxy caused that kind of behavior?

Now that you had the opportunity you took the time to look around and see how everyone else had fared. 

Kylo Ren was still fighting off one of the creatures, several dismembered shells scattered around him. Clearly he was doing just fine, he didn’t even feel worried. If anything it felt like he was enjoying himself a bit. Turning your attention from him you turned back to Molin and Garrett.

You had chosen the wrong time to look.

Garrett's body was impaled on one of the pincers of a thrylack that currently had Molin pinned between its pincers. Molin was screaming as blood flowed freely from his gored companion, spilling down the front of the creature and drenching the ground.

The crackling of lightning drew your attention away from the slaughter in front of you and back to Kylo Ren who had the second to last thrylack frozen with the Force while electrocuting it at the same time. He had put his saber away to achieve the feat, using both hands to direct the flow of electricity into the creature. Confidence flowed off of him, and you could sense he was certain that the fight was over and he had been victorious. Only then did you notice something looked off about his leg. It appeared as though a lump was sticking out from the side of his calf, but before you could figure out what it was you heard a rumble of fury come from Ren’s mask as he yelled in pain.

Releasing his hold on the now thoroughly burnt thrylack he reignited his lightsaber and slashed at his leg. The tentacled creature’s camouflage fell away as soon as it was deceased, revealing its smooth pale body which now contrasted against the black of Ren’s robes. He was struggling to rip the tightly gripping tentacles off of his legs when you heard motion coming from behind you.

The planet’s quick rotation meant that its sun was now directly overhead, brightly illuminating the surface. Which unfortunately made it all too easy to see that multiple thrylacks were appearing from behind the ridge above the complex. Their massive black shells glistened in the sunlight, highlighting just how imposing it made them look.

“ _Master_ –” you turned to Kylo Ren, wondering if he wanted to make a run for the ship or if you’d have to stay and fight, but something was wrong. He was half kneeling on the ground, struggling to get up as if his left leg was dead weight. No longer did he feel calm, instead a surge of panic was growing within him, spurred on by his decreasing motor function.

Suddenly nothing else mattered and you found yourself sprinting over to him. With your focus completely concentrated on Kylo Ren, you never saw the thrylack coming as it blindsided you.

It charged out from behind a rock formation, simultaneously slamming into you while pinning you between its pincers and knocking your lightsaber out of your hands with its overpowering momentum. Kicking and struggling you tried anything you could to get yourself out of the thrylacks grasp, its pincers securing you tightly around the waist. 

For a few seconds you thought that you were certainly going to be crushed between the creature’s jaws and eaten, but instead of a crushing pressure you felt something brushing across your stomach. Looking downwards in horror you see several pairs of tentacles emerging from the thrylack’s mouth, directly between its pincers. 

The tentacles begin to reach out towards you as the creature emerges from the thrylack’s mouth. Now it made sense, especially if every one of the other thrylacks had a similar parasitic condition.

There wasn’t much time, you could already feel the creature’s tentacles wrapping around your waist as it drew itself out of the thrylack and closer to you. Reaching your hand out towards where your lightsaber had fallen you called to it with the Force. 

It wobbled for a moment, but barely moved. You calmed yourself and mustered your focus as best as you could, given the circumstance, and reached out towards your saber with the Force once more. 

This time it moved a few inches, but that wasn’t going to help you when it was close to twenty feet away. Snarling in frustration you reached down with your other hand and began to manually pry the creature off of yourself, terror growing within you when you were unable to budge the creature’s tentacles which now somehow seemed to be glued to you.

In desperation you reached out to your lightsaber once more, using everything within yourself to call to it. This time, it lept straight toward your hand, hitting your palm with a satisfactory smack. Without wasting a single second more you pressed your deactivated lightsaber to the tentacled creature’s head and activated it, the bright flash of red immediately ridding it of its life.

All the wind was knocked out of you when the creature dropped you from its grasp, slamming your back into the ground. For a few moments it thrashed about, as if drugged, or completely confused. Maybe now without the creature's metal influence the thrylack would go back to acting normally. 

“Ah fuck…” you muttered as the creature began to charge towards you. Well, that was pretty normal for them if the research was to be believed. But perhaps if the tentacled ones could play mind tricks on them, maybe you could play one of your own.

With your saber ignited by your side, just in case, you stood your ground. You allowed the thrylack to charge at you as you gathered your focus, remembering just how it had felt to use the mind trick on Molin.

“ _ **Stop**_!” You shouted forcefully at it, bringing it to a halt just a few feet in front of you. 

“ _ **Go kill something your own size!**_ ” You shouted, gesturing it towards the other thrylacks that were coming towards you from the direction of the compound.

As soon as the words were out of your mouth the creature followed your command, charging off towards its own kind, grasping the closest one to it in its pincers and throwing it into the ground with enough force to crack its shell.

There was no time to celebrate, the single thrylack would only last so long as reinforcements continued to appear from behind the compound. 

Then there was Ren. As soon as you got to him he was already sprawled out, face down on the ground. Only for a moment did you fear that he was dead, until you realized with great relief that you could still sense his Force signature. Knowing that he was still alive you rushed towards him, desperate to see what you could do to help him.

Kneeling down you grasped him by one of his shoulders and rolled him over into your lap so that you could get him off the cold stone and see if he was responsive at all.

_“Master?”_ You asked, shaking him a bit. There was no response, not even the slightest twitch of a muscle. 

_**“Master!?”**_ You asked more urgently, shaking him harder, but your results weren’t any better.

“Oh please no…” you muttered, hanging your head miserably and fighting back the stinging in your eyes.

“H-hey are you still alive?” Molin asked suddenly prodding your back, causing you to nearly jump out of your skin.

_“I thought you were dead!”_ You exclaimed, baffled how he was still here alive in front of you.

“I got really lucky.” He shrugged. “See there were these tentacles coming out of the creature but I grabbed out my pocket knife and started hacking and them. Soon as I did that the thing seemed to die, and do you know what those things are? Because I definitely haven’t seen them during any of my research here and I’ve been here nearly four years. Do you know how much can happe-”

_“Would you shut up and help me get him on the ship!?”_ You screamed, interrupting Molin before he could waste any more time with his rambling.

“Wait, what?” Molin asked, looking confusedly down at Ren. “You mean he’s not dead...?” He further inquired, sounding a bit disappointed.

**_“No isn’t dead!”_** You screamed at him, standing up and igniting your lightsaber. _**“But you will be if you don’t shut up and help me with him!”**_

Staring around at anything but Ren Molin sheepishly nodded in agreement, to which you put away your saber so that you could use both of your arms to pick Ren up under his arms, directing Molin to do the same with his legs.

With a bit of difficulty you were both able to pick up the larger man, making painfully slow progress to the ramp of your ship. Off in the distance you could see that your thrylack was finally starting to lose to the others. It was surrounded, the other thrylacks encircling it as it tried to decide which of them to attack. Before your thrylack could react four of the other thrylacks rushed forward, grabbing hold of each of your thrylacks limbs. Then in one swift motion they all moved backwards in unison, ripping your thrylacks limbs out of their sockets with a crackling pop that you could hear from over a hundred yards away. It was definitely time to leave.

Summoning what remaining strength you had you hurried the rest of the way up the ramp and into the main quarters of the ship.

_“Close the ramp, R6!”_ you shouted at the astrodroid as soon as you saw him, pleased when he obeyed your orders and did just that.

“In here.” You said to Molin, guiding him towards Ren’s quarter’s on the ship. Slowly and gently you laid Ren down on his bed before sending Molin out of the room and closing the door.

Carefully as you could you felt around on Ren’s helmet, looking for the mechanism that would unlock it and allow you to remove it from his face. Of course, he had to design it so that it was extra complicated, causing you to fumble with it for quite a while before you finally got it figured out.

It gave a soft hiss as it released, and you delicately lifted it over his head, setting it on the table beside him. His eyes stared forward at the ceiling, completely unfocused and unseeing. If only you could see into minds like he could, just a peek would have been nice. Just to have some type of reassurance that he was alright.

Unfortunately you weren’t able to read mind, and instead had to focus on what little information you could get from his condition. You tilted his head back to make sure his airway was open and he was able to breath. Hovering over him for a few moments you checked to make sure he was doing just that, pleased to see his chest still rising and falling slowly. Feeling around his wrist you found his pulse, glad to feel that it was still there as well.

It felt horrible for you to leave him, but there was nothing else you could do for him. Now it was more important that you get off of the planet and get him to someone who’d actually be able to help. 

“R6! Get the ship ready for take off and start charting a course to the nearest First Order base.” You shouted, finally getting up and striding out of the room.

_“W-wait, what!?”_ Molin gasped. _“Y-you’re with the **First Order?”**_

“Yeah, and I just saved your ass, now shut up and help me get this ship in the air.”

 

_**THUD** _

 

The ship shook as one of the thrylacks on the outside presumably threw itself against it.

_“Hurry, you idiot!”_ You yelled at him, running towards the cockpit. When you got there you were glad to find R6 had actually listened to you again and had the ship nearly ready for take off.

Securing yourself in the pilot’s seat you took hold of the controls, all while the impacts from the thrylacks outside continued to rock the ship. It was too late for them though. Within a few moments you were guiding the ship into the air and out into the void of space. Even if some of them managed to cling on, they would die now for certain.

Once you had left the atmosphere of the planet you glanced at the navigational computer to see which system with a First Order base was the closest.

A low curse left your mouth.

“W-what is it?” Molin asked, having finally crawled timidly into the cockpit.

“Nothing.” You muttered, setting a course for the planet of Hoth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teeheehee, I hope this isn't starting to get too predictably tragic. 
> 
> Also I was pondering doing a 4/20 special, but I just never really got around to it. But I mean I can still do it if you guys would want me to. It would basically consist of a completely crack chapter that included lots of drugs and horrible/wonderful decisions. It definately wouldn't just be a normal sit and smoke session, that's for sure XD  
> So yeah, let me know if thats something any of you would want. And wish me luck with the next chapter~


	16. Perturbation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayyy sorry this took so long again. I think if you've been here this long you'll probably just know I'm a slow writer :E Thank you so much for your patience, I really hope the chapter is worth the wait!

The ship hummed as you made your way to Hoth at warp speed. Different shades of blue blurring past the windows as you raced through the tunnel in space time. Everything was still and quiet as you stared out of the window in the cockpit, a sense of emptiness continuing to grow and overwhelm you. It was strange but it felt like there something missing from you. Normally Ren's anger was like an every present warm fire near your side, but now you felt nothing of the sort.

Getting up you went to check on your Master, a growing nausea within you as you worried if the lack of emotion that you felt from him meant that his life force was fading. Easing your way into his room you shut and locked the door behind you, not wanting Molin or R6 to disturb you.

It was dark inside, but you could see that your master laid right where you’d left him, not having moved an inch since you last saw him. Worry and discomfort continued to pulsate inside of your head as you anxiously wondered what you could do. Sitting down on the bed beside him you extended a hand and hovered it over him, clumsily trying to use the Force to try to sense anything that would let you know that he was still in there somewhere.

No response came from him. A heavy sigh left your chest as you began to feel powerless on top of everything else. Had the situation been reversed, and you had been laying in your bed motionless and paralyzed, you were sure Ren would have been more use than you. Although, maybe nothing could be done now anyways, there always was the chance that there would be no cure for whatever happened. After All you were neck deep in the unknown, it would be a miracle if you could not only discern what was wrong with Ren but also fix it.

Checking one more time to make sure he was still breathing and had a pulse, you begrudgingly got up. It was anguish to have to leave him alone, and extremely vulnerable, but you had no other choice.

“Please don’t give up.” You muttered softly to his motionless form before rising to leave the room. On the way out you thought you felt the briefest stirring from Kylo Ren’s emotions, but it was gone so quickly you couldn’t be sure that you’d even felt it at all.

Making your way back to your room of the ship you prepared yourself for the task of disposing of the creatures. Truly they had never harmed you, or anyone, but keeping them any longer was too dangerous to be worth it.

Off in the main quarters of the ship you heard clanging and then a yelp from Molin, followed up by angry chirping from R6. Sighing heavily you mentally noted to check on them after you were done with your job as an executioner. 

Upon entering your room you shut the door behind yourself, and retrieved the small tank from the corner of your room. You imagined that [Red], [Green], and [Blue] would likely be starving and happily expecting to get fed. Then here you came, to destroy them rather than give them life sustaining food as you usually did. The guilt ached and stung in your head, but reminding yourself of what their kind was capable of gave you the motivation that you needed.

Initially you didn’t see anything in the tank, but that was more than normal. Often you never saw them since they were busy camouflaging themselves into their environment. Curling your fingers around the lip of the lid you pried it off, setting it to the side. Gingerly you lowered your hand into the tank, feeling around the rough rocks while nervously anticipating the moment your fingertips would brush against the soft flesh of the creatures. But that moment never came.

Cold dread began sinking into your insides, numbing and sickening you at the same time. Your searching became more frantic as you continued to fail to find them. In desperation you tried reaching out to the Force to see if you could sense them, but with only a few weeks of training your senses weren’t fine tuned enough for you to pick them out amongst the other life forms on the ship. 

Cursing in frustration you felt around the tank one more time before you gave up. The creatures were gone. There was no way to be certain if they had died or not, but something inside you told you they were still alive somewhere. The cold dread that you had begun to feel before only amplified as you began to accept what you had feared from the beginning. They could be anywhere on the ship now, and you couldn’t be sure how quickly they’d grow or what they would grow to be capable of.

The wall in front of you was suddenly very interesting as you stared blankly at it, your mind racing through the dozens of horrible scenarios that could come from the creatures being loose on the ship. One thing was clear amongst the whirlwind of thoughts inside of your mind. The food supply on the ship needed to be checked, and secured. As long as the creatures didn’t have access to food they would eventually die, in theory. It wasn’t the most satisfying, or safest, way that you could have disposed of them, but you had no choice.

Replacing the tank in the corner of the room you made your way to the main quarters of the ship, walking quickly as you moved to check on the food supply. Unlocking and opening the cabinets in the small food preparation area you were pleased to see that everything was sealed, and right where you had left it. After inspecting everything a few times for good measure you sealed everything up again, placing a lock code on the cabinet once you were finished. Once it was sealed with a satisfying hiss, you took a few moments to breath and try to calm yourself. With Ren unconscious from an unknown ailment, and three small creatures loose on the ship your nerves were beginning to feel a bit frayed. With an additional pang of anxiety you realized that meant that you were the one who was now in charge of the ship, and the mission. Hopefully Ren would be awake before you left Hoth, leadership of something this important wasn’t something that you necessarily wanted. 

Yowling of some form suddenly erupted from somewhere near the cockpit, drawing your attention back to the moment. Hurriedly you ran through the halls of the ship as you moved to where you had heard the commotion. As you rounded  the corner you found R6 angrily chirping as he loomed over Molin, his defense taser armed and at the ready. You could see why Molin made the noise that he had if he had gotten shocked by that thing. It should have been no surprise that the standard model of defense taser wasn’t good enough for Kylo Ren. Instead, he had his droid fitted with some barbaric looking contraption that he had probably made himself, just like his lightsaber. On the ground Molin continued to flinch away as the device crackled, occasionally sending a few sparks off in his direction.

“What the hell happened?” You asked whichever of them would respond.

“He attacked me!” Molin screeched, his voice jumping several octaves. 

**{//** _did not! Strange human touching wrong buttons! traitor!_ **//}**

“Molin what were you doing?” you asked him, but he didn’t respond. Instead he looked incredibly baffled.

“I uh–” he stammered, looking around in confusion,  a palpable terror growing inside of him. “I don’t know…”

**{//** _Liar! Liar!_ **//}** yelped R6, jolting the man one more time and eliciting yet another ear splitting yelp.

“Alright, alright!” You yelled, moving between R6 and Molin. “That’s enough R6.”

**{//** _you aren’t master. I don’t need your commands_ **//}** he beeped at you. But despite his defiant talk he rolled out of the room and left you alone anyways. 

“H-how did I get here?” Molin was muttering anxiously on the floor. “Wh-where am I?”

“You’re onboard a ship on the way to Hoth.” You told him, your voice tired as you stooped down and grabbed him by the arm. Then, using what little you had left of your strength you heaved him up off of the floor and began walking him towards one of the open sleeping chambers. Part of you wondered if that awful device R6 had to defend himself had given Molin short term memory loss or some type of brain damage. 

“Y-you.” Molin said, looking up at you and suddenly grabbing the front of your shirt. “I-I know you!”

“Yep,” You did your best to smile and nod at him while remaining calm. “You know me. Here why don’t you sit down and rest in here for a while.” You told him, guiding him to the bed in the first open room you came to. 

“Wait!” He called after you before you could leave. “Where are you going?”

“I have to pilot the ship.” You told him, “Just stay in here where R6 won’t bother you, alright?”

“OK…” he muttered as you finally turned and left the room, making sure the door was sealed behind you.

Now that you thought about it you really did need to be piloting the ship. There shouldn’t have been too much time left now. Once you were back inside the cockpit you confirmed that there were only thirty minutes left until you reached the small planet. It then dawned on you then that you hadn’t even bothered to make contact with the base to announce your arrival. If they operated like the rest of the First Order any ship without authorized clearance would likely be shot down as soon as it entered their airspace.

Sitting down in the captain’s chair you stared at the commands, looking around until you found something that looked like a communications device. After bringing up the information on your data pad, you input the correct communications frequency that would allow you to speak with the base on Hoth. Hopefully.

“Hello?” You said tentatively depressing the button next to the communications mic. 

After a few moments of static a harsh sounding female voice answered back, _“Who is this and what are you doing on a secure First Order channel? Identify yourself immediately!”_

“I Uh-” You stammered trying to gather up the most official sounding response you could in your head. “My name is [Y/N], and I am an apprentice to Kylo Ren. I am on route to your planet and will be arriving within the hour.” Hastily you looked up the registration number on the ship as well as what you hoped was the clearance code and transmitted both pieces of data. You knew it wasn’t the best, but it was all you had. 

_“T-the Commander?”_ The voice waivered a bit, fear creeping in and replacing the anger. _“Is he coming here as well?”_

“Yes, and–” you hesitated, unsure how much information they could be trusted with. “I’ll need a doctor on standby when we arrive.” You stated plainly, hoping against all hope that they somehow had someone competent on their staff on tiny outer lying planet. 

_“Yes, of course.”_ The female voice responded. _“We will be prepared and awaiting your arrival.”_

“Thank you,” You said, cursing to yourself as you wondered if people in the Order actually used phrases like thank you. “our estimated time of arrival is thirty minutes.”

_“Copy that.”_ The female voice responded, and then the communication cut out.

Letting out a sigh of relief you leaned back, allowing yourself a few moments to relax. For now at least, you had done everything that you could. A sudden painful stab of hunger  reminded you that you hadn’t eaten in nearly a day now, spurring you to get up and head back towards the main area of the ship.

Before you could get to the food that you so desperately needed a sight that you hadn’t been expecting stopped you dead in your tracks. There, slowly walking around the main quarters of the ship, was your master. Awake and apparently doing much better.  A smile broke over your face as you ran toward him, elated to see that he was already back on his feet now.

_“Master!”_ You called to him, but as you got closer you started to see that something wasn’t quite right. When you had called to him he hadn’t reacted. Even now, there was a slack look on his face as he stared about the interior of the ship.

“M-master?” You asked, tentatively taking a step closer to him. “Are you alright?”

As his eyes slowly started to fix on you your heart fell. It was as though he was staring right through you without seeing you at all, any spark of recognition or intelligence barely present in his eyes. _Was this the next stage of the poison that was coursing through his system? Was he going to be like this forever? Or could this hopefully pass as well?_

He continued to stare at you as your mind raced with anxious thoughts and questions, each worse than the last. Moving closer you slowly reach ed out to him, hoping that you could guide him back to his room.

“Hey,” you said gently as your fingertips made contact with the fabric of his shirt, “are you in there?” 

His hand suddenly shot out and grabbed hold of your wrist as soon as he seemed to realize you were touching him, the force of his grip uncomfortable and crushing. As you tried to wrestle your hand from his vice like grip his eyes remained locked on your face, watching your every movement, even though the expression he wore was still perfectly blank.

As you grew more frantic trying to free yourself Ren suddenly released his grip on your wrist, but continued his unwavering blank stare. Now you weren’t sure what to do with him. His mental state was currently questionable at best, but he was still capable of physically moving which was much better than he had been doing a few minutes earlier. It was still possible that he might continue to recover.

“Why don’t we go back to your room and try to lay down for a while.” You told him gently while trying to coax him in that direction. Not surprisingly he only continued to stare at you, so you slowly moved in the direction of his room, hoping that he would follow you that way. 

Thankfully it seemed to work. Every couple of steps you took backwards towards his room, he took one forward. It was starting to become unnerving having him stare at you for this long, but at least you were able to use it to your advantage.

Just as you were starting to enter Kylo Ren’s quarters he suddenly jumped backwards as the communicator on his belt blared out an the alert of an incoming call. The hash beeping seemed to startle him as his eyes widened and he clawed at it, trying to get it off of his belt.

“Easy, easy.” You told him, trying to sound as calm as possible. Even though you were sure this wasn’t a social call. Moving quickly you snaked your arms around his flailing limbs and unclipped the communicator from his belt. Walking a few paces away you held it out and braced yourself as you pressed the button to answer the call.

_“[Y/N]?”_ A small seated figure asked in bemusement upon seeing your face instead of Kylo Ren’s. Oh damn that was right… Snoke. He looked far less intimidating when only presented by the tiny projector of the holo-communicator, but you knew to be terrified none the less.

_“Where is Kylo Ren?”_ The Supreme Leader asked, his voice betraying his boiling anger.

“He’s uh…” you glanced over at where Kylo Ren currently stood a few paces, back to staring at you. “He’s not feeling well. I think he may have been poisoned.” You said, not knowing what else to say about his condition. Especially since you didn’t know what the First Order did with someone when they ceased to useful towards their cause.

_“How did he let himself get poisoned?”_ The Supreme Leader asked angrily. ** _“Allow me to speak with him immediately.”_**

“He’s not exactly…talking right now.” You said, insides squirming with terror at the knowledge that you were severely displeasing the Supreme Leader of the First Order. He had been menacing when you and your Master had been compliant with him, but now the look on his face made you want to open the airlock and throw yourself into the vacuum of space.

_**“I have not heard a report on the status of the mission in over seventy-two hours.”**_ He half growl, his glaring black eyes burning into you. _**“Report to me no–”**_

A black gloved hand suddenly closed around the communicator as Kylo Ren snatched it out of your hand and then promptly threw it against the wall. Where it shattered. You felt ice clenching at your insides as the possible repercussions for that action bounced around in your head. Most likely you were going to die. Probably sooner rather than later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Have fun thinking about all the ways the Supreme Leader might punish you. :3
> 
> Also do we want the 420 special to be a side chapter of this story? Like "bonus" part that doesn't necessarily have to be included if you aren't into that. Or should I just make up something complete different and post it as its own separate story? 
> 
> *whispers* if anyone would ever want to be an editor for this story let me know. If you don't want to I don't blame you XD


	17. Perturbation pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this took so long again D:  
> I just don't get the amount of time I would like to write anymore :/  
> BUT its ok, I will continue at my snail's pace. If you have the patience to endure waiting, then I shall keep writing!

Shock froze you where you stood as you stared at the shattered remains of Kylo Ren’s communicator. It had all happened within the blink of an eye. Your over-stressed mind now reeling as it tried to process your current situation. If Snoke had been furious before, he would be livid now. Part of you feared he would immediately kill you where you stood, but it wouldn’t make sense to kill you now. He still needed the information that currently only you had. Hopefully, you could get the situation under control before he tried contacting you again.

For starters, you needed to get your Master back to his room. That way he couldn’t destroy any other vital technology. Yet, there was creeping suspicion was festering in the back of your mind. A sort of bad feeling you'd had many times earlier in your life. But, you weren’t entirely sure how to investigate it. 

Back on 545-632 when you’d been attacked by the thrylacks, the bioluminescent creatures had somehow been able to control them. Causing you to wonder if the same were happening here as well. The only way to know for sure was to physically check for the creatures. Starting in the place they’d resided in the thrylacks.

“I’m just going to check in your mouth quick.” You said softly to your master, trying to sound as gentle and non-threatening as possible. The last thing you needed was to panic him/them, or whatever it was that stood before you now. You edged your way towards him. Uneasiness growing as his eyes remained fixed on your face while you closed the last few steps between you.

Standing before your, presumably brainwashed, master now you reached out towards his face which still remained blank. Before you could even touch him his hand shot out in a flash and snared your wrist, holding it tightly in his grasp. Kylo's facial expression remained impassive as he watched you struggle against his grip grew painfully tight. If he kept putting pressure on your wrist the way he was he was going to break it. Pain shot through your arm as you fought to pry his fingers off of your wrist without any success.

“You’re hurting me!” you yelped, still trying to wrench your hand free from his grasp. You had shouted more out of habit than anything else and were surprised when you got a reaction. The vice like pressure of his grip eased, and was replaced with a much softer hold. His fingers still hovering over your skin.

Gasping a bit as your wrist throbbed with the residual pain you smiled up at him and muttered your thanks. Grateful for the much softer touch on your wrist. Keeping in mind your goal and time constraints  you continued to inch your hand towards his face. Within a few moments, you felt your fingertips brush across the soft skin of his cheek.

Every movement you made was careful and deliberate. The last thing you wanted was to alert Ren, or whatever was controlling him, to what you were doing. At the same time, you needed to get this over with as soon as possible. Darting your hand forward you rapidly dipped your fingers into his mouth. Your knuckles scraped on his teeth as you felt around for anything that was out of place. Ren gagged a bit at your hand's sudden intrusion, but hesitated, allowing you the time to do what you had to.

Wet tentacles brushed against your hand, moments after you'd inserted it into Ren's mouth. Not wasting a second you grabbed hold of whatever you could feel and ripped it out of his mouth. Tentacles tangled around your fingers as you withdrew your hand from your Master's mouth. 

Ren slumped backward, his hand remaining locked around your wrist. Before you could get the creature off of your hand you found yourself crashing into the ground on top of Ren. Groaning against his chest you pushed yourself up, trying to orient yourself again. Immediately you noticed the lack of the creature around your hand. It must have gotten dislodged when you had fallen but looking around everywhere you didn't see it. 

Underneath you, Ren laid still where he fell, back to being paralyzed from the looks of it. Glancing around the ground you look for where the creature may have fallen. Movement from the corner of your vision catching your attention. Scrambling off of Ren's limp body you make a mad grab for the creature as it scurries along the ground. Its small tentacles moved blindingly fast as it made to escape you. Reaching your hand out, once you're close enough, you make an attempt to grab it. Closing your hand around its slimy body you try to hold onto it, only to have it slip right out of your fingers. As soon as it was on it floor again it scrambled away from you. Then, as if it were made of fluid, the creature disappeared between a narrow gap in the paneling of the ship. 

Staring at the panel that the creature had disappeared behind, you weighed the benefits and risks of pursuing it. After what had just happened, you definitely wanted the creatures back under control. But, not when that meant dismantling one of the key components of the ship. If you started taking apart the ship searching for the creatures, you risked destabilizing its trajectory. Something that wasn't recommended when traveling at light speed. For now, you'd just have to wait until one of them reared their ugly heads again.

A light groan from the floor drew your attention. Turning your head to where your master lay you see something that eases some of your tension. Finally, he was moving. And much more naturally than he had been before. Rushing over to where he laid you kneeled down and helped him to sit up as he clutched his head. 

As you supported him in your arms he blinked a few times, his eyes eventually focusing on your face. 

"Master?" You half asked and half stated after a few moments of tentative silence. 

"[Y/n]." He sighed your name, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. After all had occurred in the last few hours you were glad things were beginning to look up again.

"How do you feel?" You asked, barely abled to keep your own emotion from injecting itself into your voice. "Is there anything you need that I can get you?"

He smiled slightly at your inquiries, shifting so that he could sit up. His strength seemed to be returning, though he didn't make to stand. Instead, he seemed more than content to remain seated on the floor next to you.

"There is one thing." He said softly as he leaned closer, your faces now mere inches apart.

"W-what is tha-" you began to ask, but before you could complete your question Ren closed the distance between you. His soft lips brushed against yours as he tentatively made the first contact. When you didn't immediately pull away he moved a hand behind your head, holding you close as he deepened the kiss. The pressure on your lips became heavier and you began to feel him open his mouth. An insatiable hunger rolling off of him as he held you like the last stable thing in the galaxy.

His other hand worked its way behind your back, pressing you flush against his body. Now that he had you fully embraced in his hold he clung to you, hands grasping at your flesh as his tongue began to demand entrance into your mouth.

After a few breathy moments of hesitation, you relaxed into his grip, feeling him pull you even closer once you had. What had started out as a hesitant gesture had rapidly turned into something much more. As you felt his tongue hungrily dive into your mouth you suddenly weren't sure how far this was going to go. The moment your mouths had connected it was like an intense pressure had been released, and now nothing seemed like it would be able to stop it. 

Before you could worry just how far this encounter was going to go, something much thinner and longer than a tongue brushed its way into your mouth. As soon as you felt it you jerked your head back, breaking off the contact. The creatures inside of Kylo's mouth fell out once you pulled away, plopping onto the floor with a wet splat. You had a few moments hesitation as you stared at them in disgust, and that was all they needed. 

The tiny bioluminescent creatures were a floppy tangle of limbs for only a second. When their slimy bodies hit the floor they took only a few moments to get their barrings before scrambling to their feet. Once they were mobile they raced away with incredible speed, slipping between cracks in the paneling just like their sibling had.

Cursing loudly one more time at your bad fortune you turned back to your master. Unfortunately, he back to lying prone on the floor. As soon as you'd broken off the kiss and the remaining creatures had been removed, Kylo Ren had slumped onto the floor. Unconscious once again. You could have screamed at how frustrated you were, but that wouldn't have helped anything.

For now, you needed to get your Master back to his room, or at least off the floor. Actually, did it really matter? You would be landing in a few minutes anyways. Once on Hoth a team of doctors would, hopefully, be coming to collect him anyway. Still, you couldn't just leave him on the cold floor. 

With quite a bit of effort you were able to get him hauled up off the floor and onto one of the bench seats in the main quarters. Looking down at him as he laid motionless you had a moment to wonder if he'd remember any of this upon waking. The thought made your insides do nervous somersaults, but you'd need to deal with that later. Right now you needed to make any finally preparations and land the ship. 

But, before you could even head towards the cockpit of the ship, a muffled wailing sounded from the direction of Molin's room. Walking towards his room you braced yourself for the worst, but you weren't prepared for what you found. At first you didn't even see Molin. Taking a few steps into the room you realized why that was. He had smashed himself as far into the corner of the refresher room as he could physically manage. Fear oozing off of him in cold bursts, strong enough that just sensing it was enough to make you nauseous.

"Hey," You said calmly taking a few steps closer to him. "Are you alright? What's going on…" Your inquires promptly trailed off as you got a glimpse what was in the bowl of the toilet.

"I-I thought I was just sick." Molin muttered miserably from the ground. Meanwhile you couldn't seem to take your eyes from the monstrosity that had taken up residence in the toilet. You wanted to be sick yourself, looking at the long glistening tentacles. Some which lay splayed outside of the toilet, but most of which were a tangled heap inside. 

All at once the smell that emanated from the dead creature hit your nostrils. Raising your arm to protect yourself from the putrid fishy odor you began to back out of the room. Motioning to Molin you encouraged him to do the same.

"Keep this room sealed." You instructed him once you were both outside. Closing the room to the refresher you checked to see if there was any way to lock it, but there was not.

Now time was even shorter than it had been before. Only a few minutes remained to prepare for the landing on Hoth. Turning back to Molin you tried to gauge how he was doing. One thing was sure, he definitely looked worse than he did before. Molin's skin was now pale and clammy, and breath came in short bursts. The poor man had been severely traumatized, and in more ways than one. But, at the moment you were so tense yourself that it was hard to pinpoint just how distressed Molin really was.

"I have to land the ship." You said softly to him, his head jerking up at the sound of your voice. "Are you going to be alright here for a bit?" You tried to ask more gently, speaking to him more kindly than you ever had.

"Y-yeah." He stammered out, heaving a great breath as he tried to steady himself. "I-I'll be OK for a bit."

"Good." You said giving him a smile. "I'll be back to get you as soon as I can."

You walked out of his room calmly, but as soon as you were outside, and the door to his room was closed, you were half sprinting to the cockpit. Glancing at your master on the way there you were pleased to see that he was still right where you had left him. Seeing him lying there unconscious reminded you of the creatures though, and that three still remained at large. Unfortunately it was still something you'd have to worry about later. The best you could do now was to park the ship in the cold and hope that it killed any living creatures that were still stowed away. 

Continuing on your way you finally found yourself in the cockpit. Sitting down in the pilot's seat you glanced up at the time readout. Still five minutes left before you got to Hoth. Giving a sigh of relief you began to make the preparations to land. Waiting in tension-filled silence as you watched the seconds tick by until you got there.

Once the time was up you pulled the ship out of lightspeed, easing it into orbit, and then into a descent pattern. You didn't want to pull directly into the hangar that was currently open though. Preferring to leave the ship outside. You weren't actually sure if the cold would kill the creatures, but you knew you had to at least keep them quarantined. Away from a base full of people.

Carefully angling the ship you brought it down and landed it just a few feet outside of the open hangar door. Originally you'd been thinking that a medical team would have met the ship once it landed. But, no one ever came out of the hangar. What the hell were they waiting for? You wondered. It was midday on Hoth so it wasn't that cold. It was still well below freezing, but the temperatures could get much worse. 

After giving them a few minutes to respond, you gave up and decided everyone was probably huddled inside the hangar. Getting up you made your way to the ramp of the ship, prepared to chew someone out about improper response time. When you'd been injured you'd gotten much prompter medical attention. Kylo Ren was likely able to inspire more compliance than you were though. One of many reasons why you wished he was awake. Even though you now had one reason that made you grateful he was still asleep. Would he remember that kiss? How would he react to the memory if he did remember?

Tight nervous knots wound their way in your stomach as you marched off the ship and strode directly towards the hangar. The cold air bitting and stabbing at any exposed flesh that it could find. This was a sensation that you hadn't remotely missed since you'd been captured. Though you were glad for the cold tolerance it had given you. Without it you weren't sure if you'd been OK with walking in the open air without any protective outerwear. 

Once you were in the relative shelter of the hangar you took a few seconds to kick and brush off the snow that had accumulated on you. Looking up after you were done you were greeted by the barrel of a blaster. Several of them actually. All with their aim trained right on your face.

"The fuck…?" You muttered, taking the time to appreciate that every weapon you could see, and there were quite a few, were all aimed at you.

"Did you really think we'd be so stupid that we'd fall for your little trap?" Utterly perplexed by what they'd said you stared at the serious woman who had spoken. She was incredibly tall, and blond, and felt highly agitated.

"What trap?" You asked, becoming even more agitated yourself.

"We know you're still working for the Resistance." she spat in disgust. "And I'm sure that ship over there is filled with men just waiting to try and reclaim this base once our guard is down."

"It's not, actually." You muttered flatly, unamused by the rampant speculation. 

"Liar!" She half shouted, her men tensing but still keeping their aim steady.

You did not have time for this paranoid bullshit right now. Creatures that could hijack someone's brain were loose aboard your ship, Kylo was still sick, and right now you were just plain exhausted. Channeling that frustration you tried to sound as commanding and direct as you could. Trying to picture what your master would say if he was here instead of you.

"I swear by all the galaxies in the universe," you started, attempting to make your voice sound menacing. "if you don't send a medical team onto that ship to retrieve the two incapacitated residences I will cut down every last one of you." 

There were a few seconds of silence, and then, everyone burst into laughter. Apparently you hadn't been as intimidating as you had thought. You were much angrier though. Snatching your saber off of your belt you ignited it, and made several slashing strikes before the men had time to react. The plasma blade cutting through the barrels of the blasters closest to you like they weren't even there. The heavy metal hit the ground with several thuds as sparks arched in the air.

Silence broke through the laughter, returning the atmosphere to a tense standoff once again. This time, though, you had the upper hand, your saber now trained on the officer's throat.

**"Did I fucking stutter!?"** You screamed at her face. " _Medical team. **Ship. NOW**_ **.** "

More silence. But finally, the officer gave a nod to one of the men not in uniform beside her. He looked horrified for a moment but quickly moved forward with a few troopers, and a hover transport behind him.

"So you truly are Ren's apprentice after all." The officer muttered once you lowered your blade.

"Yeah," you grumbled, even more tired after your outburst. "I told you that already. Please listen to me when I speak in the future."

She regarded you for a few seconds before holding out her hand to shake.

"Officer Phasma." She said, introducing herself. It was a friendly enough gesture but the woman's face stayed carefully blank and guarded.

"[Y/n]." You shook her hand, introducing yourself in return. There was a chance you could be here a while. May as well attempt to be cordial. 

"Do you have a communications room?" You asked a few seconds later. "I have a transmission I need to send to the Supreme Leader."

Mention of the Supreme Leader caused Phasma's poker face to waver for a moment, but she quickly got it back into place.

"Of course," She replied. "Right this way." She told you, leading you towards the room. Leaving you to wonder again if the Supreme Leader was capable of reading minds from afar. If he was, then you'd have to do your best to not think about what really happened on the shuttle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! If its getting too predictable or anything like that just let me know. I encourage speculation on the part of the readers so I can write the reader in the story more accurately.
> 
> ALSO! 420 special will coming up next! I will post one separate story, concocted for pure tomfoolery, and crack with some plot. Then I'll write the 420 special/bonus chapter for this story (probably sometime after Hoth). After that I'll get back to just writing this story.
> 
> Hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of summer! Until next time, stay awesome! :D

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, here we go. This is my first time ever doing this, so just keep that in mind.  
> Let me know how I'm doing, things you do/don't like, and more than anything I hope you can find some enjoyment from reading this story. I know I'm enjoying writing it.
> 
> Bear in mind, I'm also the only one who proof reads these things, and English was never my favorite subject. It should be more than readable but if you catch any mistakes I missed you are more than welcome to mention them.


End file.
